Ghostbusters (2016)

It's got an amazing cast, each of whom I absolutely adore. The director directed some of them in Bridesmaids, which is absolutely hilarious. The editors were responsible for 40-Year-Old Virgin and Anchorman, two favourites. But don't slam me as anti-feminist when I say this is a horrible movie, and I wonder if it got 73% on Rotten Tomatoes because reviewers were wary of giving a bad review.

There are a few great scenes, but it all falls apart. Kate McKinnon (whom I think was channelling Quicksilver, but my kids don't see it) does a dance that could have been funny, but it's almost painful to watch her exchange with Kristen Wiig. It's not the acting, but that it's filmed oddly so they feel like they're in different rooms, as if they filmed all their lines one at a time, then meshed them into a scene together. There were many times the film had a strange, filmed-by-high-school-kids type of feel to it, which is what prompted me to actually look up the editors.

This genre of film is right up my alley, except I cringe at ridiculous incompetence disguised as humour (Chris Hemsworth being baffled by glass or how to answer a phone or the difference between his eyes and ears - actually). The homage to the original was heavy-handed. Some of the cameos were worth the two minutes of film, but others were wasted. The remake of the title song was painful, and the much-hyped heavy metal concert scene was positively bland, Ozzy's micro-appearance notwithstanding. Who goes to a concert at four in the afternoon? The action scenes felt plodding. And then it all ended in the middle of a boring sibling argument over a car. No final joke. It just panned out to credits with some non-funny 'bonus' bits that are now to be expected.

Despite passing the Bechdel Test (among others), it didn't feel like a feminist celebration. This is making the rounds on Twitter, and it's far funnier than the movie it describes:

There's an awkward sub-plot that shifts the genders on the stereotype of bosses hiring a ditzy secretary for a little eye candy at the office. Maintaining a sexist trope but switching the genders doesn't make it any less sexist or offensive, or, in this case, any less dumb and annoying. The film doesn't have to solve all the problems with sexism, but it would be nice if it didn't add to them. That sub-plot wasn't part of the original film. Annie Potts was sexy, but she was no bimbo.

I wonder, though, if we're so excited to have a female version of a male film, that we're wary to say anything wrong about it, especially in the face of the kind of criticism it received before it was even released because of the female leads. We need movies like this to prove a point, that they can be good. And they can be, it's just this one isn't. And that's okay. There are an awful lot of movies with amazing male actors that are completely unwatchable. It happens. And the small but vocal faction that is obsessed with denigrating anything female-driven just needs to be eye-rolled into oblivion.

Some women have argued that every feminist should be supporting Hillary, but it's not feminist to vote for just any woman or to blindly support anything a woman does. It's feminist to support the principles that will erode inequality and oppressive stereotypes. Having female leads isn't enough to make a film feminist, or for this feminist to suggest anyone see this film. Ever

Funny or Annoying: Wanderlust, Five-Year Engagement, and 21 Jump Street

After all the doom and gloom of Revolution, I was up for something much lighter.  I found three recommended comedies I had never heard of before (which is often, but not always, a red flag).

Wanderlust has Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, and those two have made some stinkers in their time, so I was dubious. But the movie was light and held my attention enough to make me forget my troubles for the duration.  It's about two city-kids who go broke and join a commune.  People are people, and even in an all-loving, caring, trusting beautiful commune, there are jerks.  It's unavoidable.  It was cute. I'll give it a B-.

The second feature, The Five-Year Engagement, has Jason Segel, Emily Blunt and Alison Brie.  I love them, so this had to be good, right?  There were parts that were actually so unwatchable, I kept my hand at the ready to fast-forward.  There's a few weird sex scenes, some with food that make no sense in any context, but not even in a funny way.  And it wins the worst scene in any movie ever: Blunt and Brie entertaining a kid by talking as Elmo and Cookie Monster.  I kid you not.  Painful.

Why did they agree to do that?  Didn't they see how horrible it was?  Did they get paid a fortune?  Or, I suppose, it's just not my kind of humour.  Because at that link above, many many people say it was the funniest part of the movie.

Even worse than the painful scenes of nonsense is that the entire message of the film is that if a woman outperforms her man at work, it will have painful consequences for everyone.  The solution:  women should ditch their amazing opportunities (as a tenure-track PhD) and follow their husband's dream to own his own restaurant which can only happen in a city at the other end of the country, of course.  Otherwise the guy will become a bum and grow weird facial hair and just give up at life. Geesh, women are so selfish!   It was kinda like Mr. Mom, except in that movie, the dad learns to stop being such a baby and step up - and it's actually funny.  

Okay, I admit I did laugh out loud a few times at Engagement, but it didn't make up for the awkwardly unfunny scenes.   At all.  But it's a C- in my book because, for some reason, I was compelled to watch it to its painfully corny ending.

But, then, I watched 21 Jump Street with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.


It's that same sophomoric humour, but I was killing myself laughing.  It's clearly an A- for me.  And I thought about who to share the movie with, and it occurred to me how curious it is how we decide what's funny and what's annoying - because I have some friends who wouldn't consider watching any of these movies.

Sometimes sex scenes can be funny to me.  The scene in Grandma's Boy with the Barbie doll was hilarious, but Jason Segel having really fast sex in Engagement or even his different experiences in Forgetting Sarah Marshall weren't at all entertaining.  I found them uncomfortable.  And I found it tedious when Paul Rudd practiced pick-up lines in front of a mirror in Wanderlust.  What's the difference between these scenes?

I think unsexy sex is funny if the idea is new.  It has to be really original.  Maybe it's because I discovered fast forwarding VHS movies for kicks when I was ten, that it's not that hilarious to see it done in a big budget film.  But "You came on my mom!" is a new concept to me.  It's also a juxtaposition of the sacred and profane that can draw laughs.  Sometimes.  The other key is it can't be too close to home to hit a nerve.

I loved the first Harold & Kumar movie, but the Guantanamo Bay movie was too soon.  The prison is still in operation today, for crying out loud, and people really were sexually assaulted.  I know too much about the painful realities of the situation to be able to laugh at it.  Maybe ever.

People can get hurt in movies for our entertainment, but only certain types of people.  Most men can get hurt for laughs, but it's trickier for women.  It's hilarious if Kristen Wiig gets knocked down, but remember when a very young Brooke Shields tried a pratfall on the Tonight Show?  It was horrifying to watch.  She somehow provoked a sense of protection so it wasn't funny when she got hurt.  We're okay with people being hurt only if we think they can take care of themselves - or if we're made to hate them.  Even little kids getting hurt can be funny if they're annoying enough.  Or sometimes just if it's sudden and startling enough - right out of nowhere.  Or if they keep trying to do something but fail every time.  Okay, maybe it's always funny.  As much as I love cats, I laugh when they get hurt too.  It's been my experience that they're always okay afterwards.  They just shake it off and keep going, so it's rarely a tragedy.  Yet I feel a bit callous saying I get some joy from their epics fails right out loud.

Humour can't be objective because it has to do with individual experiences and sensitivities.  What's universal is needing to care about the characters and to understand the irony being posed, but I'm sure someone laughed his head off at the food sex scene in Engagement.  And somehow I think Jason Segel thought it was funny too, which is oddly disappointing.  We often make connections with people based on a shared humour which can reveal a shared background.  Funny that.

Is Ebert Getting Soft?

I watched two films last night both on Roger Ebert's glowing recommendations.  The first, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, has an amazing cast, and an incredible setting to work with, but the storyline seemed so contrived I couldn't get past it.  He gave it 3.5 stars.  It had a few great lines, but please.


Maybe I just don't know any people like this, or maybe it's because I'm not British, but a few of the characters are destitute, having lost their entire life savings, and they feel the best way to manage their retirement is to fly to India and move into a hotel sight unseen.  I get that it's cheaper to live in India than Britain, but couldn't they stay with a friend in town?  How did they pay for the plane ticket?  Will they just never see their kids again?  Why don't all the poor in Britain move to India?  And how did Judi Dench's character get a work Visa?  I suppose I shouldn't let the minor details ruin the flavour of the film, but the themes had me rolling my eyes too.

This is a love-conquors-all film.  Love is great and all, but there is more to life. Some of the characters are in an amazing new country, but their only concern is getting laid.  They need to feel young again.  It reminded me of that horrid Pippa movie I watched recently. I know several people in their 60s and 70s who don't spend their days and nights trying to feel young again - or at the very least they don't need to have sex in order to feel vital.  Why aren't they ever represented in mainstream movies?  And everyone's so concerned that everyone else gets partnered up, yet they leave out poor Maggie Smith.  Nobody encourages her to get with anybody - or to never give up being sexy.  Is it because she's temporarily disabled, or because she's too old?

And why is outsourcing retirement living to India seen as a good thing that we all should hope works out?  

I love Maggie Smith.  To most people these days she's Professor McGonagall, but I can't stop seeing Miss Jean Brodie.  (I think I saw that one at a far too impressionable age.)  And I love that the crabby wife is the mom from Shaun of the Dead.  And Bill Nighy and Tom Wilkinson are two of my favourite actors, and I'm loving Dev Patel these days (having just recently seen Slumdog).  But why did Tom's character wait so long to re-connect with the love of his life?  Couldn't they have exchanged addresses and kept in touch after he moved away?  It's just a far too convenient plot devise.  And why did a woman who's lived in India her entire life decide to move in to this hotel?  And what's with the tearful phone calls to people back home when they all have computers and the internet.  Doesn't Skype work there?  There were a few too many easy roads taken with the material and too many inconsistencies for me to call this a winner.  But the actors were a delight to watch, and it entertained me enough to keep me awake as I marked tests.  So that's something.  I didn't hate it, but it wasn't worthy of its cast.
Maybe a B-.

But the second movie Ebert recommended has far less to cushion it:  The Odd Life of Timothy Green.

 

It's an interesting premise.  A couple wish so hard for a kid, that their wish comes true and they get the exact kid they wanted - but with leaves growing on him (because he sprouted out of the garden).  But, of course, this is partially a careful-what-you-wish-for film.  And if you want to see a great film with that premise, watch Ted instead - a fantastic film in many ways.  Odd Life  could have been good, and it started really well, but then it got painfully schlocky.  The kid's a misfit, yet is able to turn curmudgeonly hearts to butter.  Whatever.  I can handle that.  It's that his family saved the town's pencil factory from closing with a proposal to make pencils out of leaves and thus save all the trees.  Um...  I don't think so.  And the over acting was painful to watch, especially, and this is hard to say, Dianne Wiest - whom I typically adore.  Jennifer Garner acted in the same way she acts in every movie, and that's getting tiresome all on its own.  And if you want to just dive right into the schlockiness of the film, the little girl they end up with should have been called Ivy!    Ebert gave this 3.5 stars.  I'm giving it a solid D.   But I got even more marking done. 

When Good Actors Make Bad Films

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500 Days of Summer

I watched this for the second time and like it much better, but I still don't love it.  I do love the fanciful bits of filming:  the dance number with cartoon birds, the buildings turning into drawings and being erased, the numbers with different levels of darkness in the sky, and the beginning caveat in print.  I like the out-of-orderness of it that makes it more realistic as a memory.  The story is original and compelling.  So what's the problem?



Tom and Summer meet.  She says lets keep it casual.  He falls in love and is tormented when she dumps her.  The first time I saw it, I couldn't stand it because of Tom's annoying neediness - that he didn't listen to her words when she said she didn't want a relationship, that he thought little things were signs that she was falling for him, regardless what she told him, and that he can't cope without her.  It's just too frustrating to watch him.

After a second viewing, I'm no more sympathetic to him, but I like how he's explained.  He's a product of too many cliched romantic movies, and he's taken his cues from fantasy instead of seeing what's right in front of him.  His blind date spells it out for him, but he still can't see it.  And by the end, he still won't learn.  He's a romantic, and I think we're supposed to admire his tenacity and hopefulness, but the ending was still annoying to me.  It's believable, for sure, but it's bad enough watching it unfold in real life.  Many of us make the same mistakes over and over like we're on auto-pilot.  It's painfully tedious.

But there are some lovely little touches throughout the movie and some entertaining supporting characters that make it worth a watch.

ETA - I like it more now that I know JGL felt the same way about his character:

B+

Moonrise Kingdom

This movie is perfectly cast.

The romantic leads (the kids) have expressions and attitudes that make them very believable as perpetual outsiders.  Bill Murray and Frances McDormand (whom I hope to be when I grow up) make an entertaining tired couple. She dresses just like my mom did in that time period - yet she has a way about her that always makes her kind of desirable.  (But maybe that's just me.)  Edward Norton is the chain-smoking Boy Scout Leader with Jason Schwartzman and Harvey Keitel running a superior camp across the lake.  Tilda Swinton is the antagonist from Social Services, and, of course, Bruce Willis is the cop with a heart of gold.

Once again, another Wes Anderson film that shows the setting like it's part of a dollhouse.  You feel like you can just open it up and play with all the people inside.  And the kitten.  Everything has a make-believe feel to it from the get-go which comes back to delight us again at the ending.  If a Clooney-voiced fox showed up the in meadow, he would have fit right in.

You can't really trust anything I say about Wes Anderson though; he had me at Bottle Rocket.  It's the kindness that always gets me.  Sure we're all a little broken, but the real test is whether or not we can rise above our own crap to be kind.  Can we be brave enough to work against type, to ignore the masses to do what's right whether that means pretending your brother's breaking you out of the hospital or dancing with a student at a school dance or finally being honest and vulnerable with your family or convincing a pack of kids to help someone they always hated.  His characters know and accept that they're a bit off.  They're genuine.  And even though they're not always moral in the conventional sense, they're truly kind, sometimes in the most difficult circumstances to be so.

Gosh.

A

Elling and 50/50

Two beautiful films for today on the friendship between a struggling man and his loud, horny friend. I swear I don't look for similar films to watch back to back.  It just keeps happening.  Weird.

Elling is such a delight.  The two leads meet in an institution.  Neither can live on his own, but they decide that maybe together they can take on the outside world.  It's a Felix and Oscar union but so much kinder - and more violent.  Things get shaken up as they each meet someone on the outside, and it takes a bit of reassurance that their friendship is still a top priority before they can enjoy themselves again.

They're fearful of many commonplace things and activities.  It's a reminder of how much courage it can take for some people to cross the floor of a restaurant alone or to talk on the phone.  It's a reminder to be more understanding of all the stories we don't know about the people we meet.

It's a must see for the hidden poems and the Christmas presents and the gregarious exclamations!  The trailer would just spoil it.

Then I watched 50/50.




It's a movie about friendship disguised as a movie about cancer.   It's painfully realistic in places, yet still light-hearted overall.  I'm not sure why I keep gravitating to Joseph Gordon-Levitt movies lately, but here he is again.  And I've liked Seth Rogen since I watched him fall in love in Freaks and Geeks.



I love that both films include a woman who is neither bitchy nor cloying, doesn't get in the way of the friendship by toying with the other guy, and isn't hated by the friend.  That's a nice change.   There are a lot of buddy movies out there, and in so many of them, if there's a central female at all, she's that same irritating character.  She's in the first bit of 50/50, but they soon get rid of her.  That plot element loosely reminded me of Office Space actually:  a guy has a horrible girlfriend, he goes through a pivotal transformation and then finally is able to connect with a nice girl.  Apparently it took having cancer before he could insist on being treated kindly.     

Midnight in Paris

Loved Midnight in Paris.

I loved Owen Wilson in this surprisingly non-moronic role. I loved all the supporting actors. I especially loved Adrien Brody, Kathy Bates, and Marion Cotillard.

But I hated Rachel McAdams. I hated her in Sherlock Holmes too. She was good in Mean Girls, but anything else seems like too much of a stretch. Her lines are flat and dead. She reminds me of Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral, or Zooey Deschanel in, well, anything. All beautiful women, but their lines just sit there. Melanie Griffith was great in Something Wild where she seemed to play her real self, but anywhere else she was empty. But many people would disagree with me...



Anyway, when I left the theatre, I couldn't help but look at my city differently. Not to compare it with Paris, but to really look at the bits of crumbling bricks, and the odd collection of chairs on someone's porch, and the tiny initials in a heart at the corner of a building. The film is all about art and literature, and it name-drops all over the place. I have a background in fine art, so I was in my element.  But beyond the trivia, the film reminds you to SEE the world around you.


SPOILER ALERT


The film is reminiscent of Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo in its time travelling elements. It plays to the message that life is unsatisfying so we long for somewhere else to go that might be more perfect - might be a better fit because we just don't feel quite right where we are. And Gil, the main character, figures this out and decides to stay in the present time. But then he decides to move to Paris instead of returning home to California. At first I thought he just didn't get the message in full, that he still needed to change something. But no. I think he got it. We can never fit in perfectly, nor be completely satisfied in our lives. But they don't have to suck either. We can make changes within limits like moving to a city that suits us better.

Escaping or Just Living

I love watching movies. I watched three last night.  When I was little I lived for the Movie for a Sunday Afternoon. Almost any genre was fine with me. I'd watch with other people or alone. When I lived with my first boyfriend, we didn't have cable or Pay TV, so I'd watch movies scrambled. We got TVO, though, and I spent every Friday night watching the foreign film festival until he got home from pick-up hockey. Typically the guys would barrel in as the second feature would be just ending, and I'd be on the couch with tears running down my face shushing everyone, "Just ten more minutes!" Then he and his hockey buddies and I would talk into the wee hours. Once VCRs became standard household fare, and I was no longer the slave of the networks, I was hooked. Now there's Netflicks. Yikes.

I paint, and read, and write, and go for walks. In the summer I bike fanatically. Sometimes I renovate my house. Those all seem like reasonable ways to spend time. Watching movies is somehow embarrassing. I don't tell people I might watch six or seven movies in a week. If I read as many books, it would be impressive. I'm not sure what the difference is. Am I escaping life by watching so many movies or is this just what a particular life looks like?

The movies last night were all highly rated, but I didn't love any of them (NO spoilers): Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Tamara Drewe, and Blue Valentine. They left me depressed.

Dragon Tattoo is a murder mystery with gruesome rape scenes and many pictures of mutilated women. I'm not sure why it's so well-received. I found it disturbing. At least the main character was female, smart, and in control of the situation. She doesn't really fit in anywhere either, but she makes a go of it anyway. It's got that. But I'm not sure that makes up for the horrid visuals that I'll never get out of my head. I think I'd prefer the books.

I thought Tamara Drewe would cheer me up. It's light fare, and based on Far from the Madding Crowd. I loved Hardy as a teenager. I saw Tess with Nastassia Kinski when I was 14, then read all his books. Tess was so totally ripped off, and I related to that feeling. Sometimes people just take what they want, then ditch you and look down at you for giving it up. Jerks. I loved Bathsheba too despite her arrogance because she didn't need men the way so many other women I knew seemed to. Well, at least she tried to run her place by herself for as long as she could. The film is similar with the three suitors and a crazy dog, a rock star (named Sergeant) replaced the sergeant, and it ends the same, but it didn't have the same feel to it. Maybe it's my age, but I was more interested in the sub plots of the spurned author's wife and the bored teenagers than the main plot of the new girl in town - and the setting. I would love to live there forever. The spurned wife was really the one managing everything on her own, and the teenagers were engaged in their mischief. Tamara didn't do anything. She's a successful journalist, and she was writing a novel, but she wasn't doing the work to survive the way Bathsheba did at the start of it all. Okay, she was, but she didn't seem to struggle enough for my liking. It all came too easily for her to make her very interesting to me. I think the film was too short and light to capture the feel of the book. Tamara accepted proposals and propositions way too fast to show a truly independent spirit. It was cute, but nothing amazing - along the lines of Notting Hill.

I ended the trio with Blue Valentine - the movie I was most looking forward to seeing. I found it boring and annoying. A couple meets, marries, becomes contemptuous, and divorces. There's lots of fighting - none of it interesting nor poignant. There's a lovely little scene of her dancing while he sings, but it's in the trailer, and that's about it. It's sad and frustrating that people can't figure out how to live and love better. She wants to grow and develop as a person, to do more than just exist, and he just wants to play. She's stagnating with him. But what really bugged me about it was that the entire film took place over six years or so - judging by the age of the little girl, but everyone ages significantly. It's likely just a means to be able to separate the early and later scenes as they go back and forth, but I think they could have come up with something better. Almost everyone gets glasses over those six years, but most bizarre is her dad went from early middle age to needing an oxygen tank. Those were some six years! If you want a really good Ryan Gosling film, see Lars and the Real Girl.

All in all, relationships are hard to do well. Just like in Mr. Nobody, the take home message is make sure both of you are in love before you get going too far. But that's sometimes hard to figure out. Sometimes it feels like you're in love because someone's familiar or comforting or they make you laugh or feel something. And sometimes you're really truly in love and then it all just goes away. Poof. And sometimes it doesn't go away, but you just can't live with them anymore.

But there are moments in there. Moments of pure connection where we feel so understood and listened to and cared about. That's all that there is, my friends.

The Kids are All Right? Not So Much

The Kids are All Right is not to be confused with the excellent movie, The Kids are Alright. So, first of all, I don't really get the title. What makes the kids okay?  Or is it that they have moments where the kids come up with an intelligent idea or two? The kids in the movie each hung out with a bullying best friend, which isn't "right." So they're clearly not right all the time. The moms worried about the son being gay, but he wasn't, so is that what's "right"? Or is the right-ness that he knows he's straight, he's correct about his sexual orientation whereas the moms were clearly in the wrong on that one. I'm confused. Anyway, some spoilers below but, really, nothing you couldn't guess from the trailer.



What's the hoopla about this movie? Maybe I'm being too hard on it because I was really really looking forward to this film, and it just didn't meet my expectations. I worry a bit that people think it's amazing just because the moms are lesbians and everyone wants to celebrate that. It's great when LGBTQ relationships are depicted as regular folk in movies, but it can't be enough to carry the film. Because if you take out that one ingredient, it's just about a couple who are getting stale, who connect with their donor who sleeps with the wife, which shakes up the marriage and upsets the kids, but they all live happily ever after. There wasn't a moment of clever dialogue. There weren't intriguing ideas presented that I had to go away and really think about for a while. There weren't unusual or intense characters presented. And there weren't, really, amazing acting skills being showcased here except, maybe, Mia Wasikowska. Bening is cute as a button, and she does a reasonable job, but I'm always conscious that she's acting. I never get lost in her performance. Look, she's doing cold and uppity. Now she's doing upset. Now she's doing sad. But maybe that's just me. Is she getting kudos just because she was able to kiss Julianne Moore convincingly? I've kissed worse.

Their daughter is leaving home for the first time, and the grief that could bring to some parents was barely registered. I know it's a light-hearted film, but comedies don't work when they gloss over pain. Their son is hanging out with a total jerk and the obsessive parents are practically oblivious. They mention disliking him, but they do little else even though they seem controlling in most other aspects of their lives. Everyone seemed a little flat in their performances.

I understood Ruffalo's character most. He's a player who suddenly realizes what he could have had, but doesn't, and he attaches with some desperation. But the family's reaction to this bothered me. There wasn't an ounce of understanding. He got full blame for the affair, and they wrote him off. So long as he's not there, they're all fine, right? There wasn't any resolution of any depth here. They held hands at the end - big deal. I predict Bening's character will go back to being controlling and Moore's character will meet someone else pretty darn soon.

If you want to see a good comedy about people having affairs and the problems that brings, check out Hannah and Her Sisters. I'm not a Woody Allen groupie, but this one is very good. It's hilarious, yet Allen has a way of still showing the grief and heartache and anxiety an affair can cause. It makes us react. Or, even funnier in my eyes is Play It Again, Sam. Remember that scene where Linda's getting into bed with her husband, but she's looking at that little skunk Allan got her. I know exactly how she was feeling. I wasn't watching her; I was right there with her.

If, on the other hand, you want to see a marriage in crisis acted beautifully in a way that gets you so involved you want to hug them and you cry for them and you really feel for each of them, and you cheer for them when they work through their crap and actually begin to get to the other side, then watch Rabbit Hole, and give this tripe a pass.

If what you're really after, though, is a excellent film with a lesbian couple at the centre of it all, I wish I could recommend one. Better Than Chocolate almost gets it. The story line could be so good in someone else's hands, but, like The Kids..., it's superficial and flat which is such a shame because it's so close to being really good! But I'm a Cheerleader is hilarious, but it's campy. It's not a realistic portrayal of a relationship, but it's still a lot of fun. The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love is cute, but by no means an excellent film. Actually, I loved the family in that movie - the main character's two moms were exceptional, but there's not enough of them. Go Fish has got to be one of the worst movies ever made, but it's still on top ten lesbian film lists because there's just not enough good lesbian films out there. There are others I can think of with a lesbian couple in the background, but not at the centre presented as normal, regular folk just going about their lives.

One that works better than most, actually, is Kissing Jessica Stein.  It's sort of about a lesbian couple, but one party is reluctant to fully embrace the identity.  It touches on some realistic issues though.  

I think this all means we're not far along enough to treat lesbian relationships as part of an excellent movie instead of the main focus, the special effect that will draw in enough of a crowd that the rest of the film can be painfully mediocre.

Any other lesbian film suggestions? Any truly excellent ones out there that aren't about the lesbian-ness of it all, but about life in general?

High Life and True Grit

I recently watched True Grit and High Life. Both were entertaining romps.

I particularly liked Matt Damon in True Grit, and I don't typically like him much. Sure I love the Borne trilogy, most his films really, but I never really took to him. Maybe it was the 'stash that did it for me finally.

Jeff Bridges has been a long time favourite. Dude! And Last Picture Show anyone? Fabulous Baker Boys, Fisher King, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Morning After, and of course, Crazy Heart. Nicely done, Jeff.

But, nominations or not, I didn't much care for the girl. Especially because I first watched True Grit when I was a 7 or 8, and I had a serious crush on Kim Darby. She was one of my formative role models of girlhood!

I have no poignant connections to make between the two films except that they were both sadly entertaining - a dark slice of life, and both about desperation.

High Life is about a bunch of stoners that try to steal money disguised as ATM repairmen so they can finally live the high life - that is, stay high all the time. It had some funny moments, but it was a bit too sad for me to be altogether hilarious. They were pretty realistic addicts.

HP6 and Whatever Works

Harry Potter 6 is well worth the 3 hours of film if you include excessive previews. It's a delight to watch! I particularly found it difficult to take my eyes off Malfoy. He went all out this time round. And whenever I see Maggie Smith (almost 75), I will always think of Miss Jean Brodie: "I'm past me prime gels," or, even better, "Six inches is perfectly adequate. More is vulgar!"

I don't, however, recommend this movie to a restless 5-year-old - not mine anyway. She loves all the movies, but only when she's watching them at home. For this, she was bored after about 20 minutes, and we had to make a few trips to the bathroom, and I was glad to have some toys on hand to entertain her because I wasn't bored in the least. She spent more time watching the audience than the film.

As for Whatever Works, I was sorrily disappointed. I hadn't thought much of Woody lately, but I loved Vicky Cristina Barcelona. So I was looking forward to something special, but it disappoints. The actors spoke like they were on stage, and the main character, Boris, spoke to the audience frequently, and that's typical for Allen, but I find it awkward to watch. It's impossible to get lost in the film when you're constantly aware these people are acting. I liked that Boris tells it like it is to everyone he meets. I tend to admire people like that. But his love interest, Melodie, was supposed to be his opposite particularly to his brilliance, but her stupidity was over the edge and grating. A few lines of hers were funny, but too many were just uncomfortable. He's the heartless brain, and she's the brainless heart, and they're both painfully two-dimensional.

At 92 minutes, it feels like it goes on forever, yet it really needs another half hour or so. Characters change paths abruptly and unbelievably. There's too many to get to know them very well in the time allotted, and most feel like they're just doing a first reading of the script. Instead of subtle dialogue and action leading the plot, everything's spelled out in efficient asides that are devoid of any creativity or poetry. By the end I felt beat over the head with the big message: Enjoy life in any way that works for you. There. I spoiled the ending for you, so you don't have to go. You're welcome.

Hannah and Her Sisters it's not. Too bad.

Harold and Kumar - Don't Go There

I loved the first Harold and Kumar movie, but the second, Escape from Guantanamo Bay, is horrid.  The film has tons of gratuitous brazilian waxed pubic shots and lots of semen scenes too. But worst of all, call me a prude, I just can't find the humour in sexual abuse. There's a running joke throughout the film about the meals at Guantanamo Bay consisting of a "meat sandwich" which alludes to the guard forcing inmates to perform felatio as their only sustenance.

I know it's all satire, and it's supposed to be anti-PC, but it seemed to make a mockery of the real torture going on at Gitmo. On satire:

"The best satire does not seek to do harm or damage by its ridicule... but rather it seeks to create a shock of recognition and to make vice repulsive so that the vice will be expunged from the person or society under attack or from the person or society intended to benefit by the attack."

This satirical torture just wasn't funny or ironic on any scale I can imagine. It was absolutely painful. I winced for most of the movie before being rescued by sleep.

Trivia Trumps Truth

I re-watched Being John Malkovich recently and was struck by, or perhaps imagined, some concepts I hadn’t noticed on previous viewings. I'm thinking out loud and going all over the place here, but I might actually get somewhere along the way. Let's see! For those uninitiated, a portal has been found in Malkovich's head which enables people to see what he sees, feel what he feels, for fifteen minutes at a time. Craig and Maxine, a woman he lusts over who falls for his wife Lotte, decide to make a buck off access to the portal.

I caught the Heloise and Abelard connection at the first run through. The entire film hinges on difficult connections between people in love, requited or the unrequited variety – very bad for the skin. Passion can drive a guy to do things he might not do otherwise: like have sex with an underage student, the daughter of a powerful man who will have you castrated for the transgression, or perhaps he'll tie up his wife and leave her in a cage while he dons a disguise to boff her lover.

And Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard is thrown in there as JM studies some lines. It fits beautifully with the futility of the people finding meaning or hope in stuff. It’s just stuff and it all goes away. Nothing is permanent. You can’t save the cherry orchard no matter how you slice it. And poor Craig. The only way he can save Maxine's life is to give up the only means he has to attract her, and she still barely pays any attention to him. He sacrifices his money and career to save her, well he thinks he's saving her anyway, and she ditches him at the side of the highway. That's life.

But this time round I picked up on a few themes I’m seeing in various other places all of a sudden. The first: the affirmation of ordinary life. A man slips into JM’s body for fifteen minutes as he’s ordering bath towels, trying to finagle more washclothes for fewer bathmats, and the interior peeping tom calls the experience amazing! We're engrossed with the trivial details of lives, no longer looking deeper for anything more meaningful; sometimes bath towels are enough to hit the mark. And love - our experiences with family and friends are at the top of the hierarchy of the trivial. But as much as we find meaning in the mundane, is there a bigger meaning out there that we're neglecting? Are we missing the forest for the trees?

And the self-fulfillment of the characters is a force that works against their family life. The original couple can't be happy together and find personal fulfillment. It's either one or the other.

I recently re-read a bit of Charles Taylor: "Nature draws us because it is in some way attuned to our feelings, so that it can reflect and intensify those we already feel or else awaken those which are dormant. Nature is like a great keyboard on which our highest sentiments are played out. We turn to it, as we might turn to music, to evoke and strengthen the best in us."

And I remember thinking at the time that this provocation also might explain our love of pets. And I thought of this watching Cameron Diaz insist on sleeping with Elijah, the chimp, when he's feeling out-of-sorts. Even Elijah is navel-gazing in the film, spending time in intensive psychotherapy. We've shifted from a philosophical exploration of human nature to a psychological fixation with my nature - or my pet's nature even.

Which brings me round to The Zoo Story. I'm wavering between our love of animals bringing us to a different level of being, evoking and strengthening and all that jazz, and our adoration of the little things being a pathetic stepping stone towards a real relationship with people. You gotta connect with something. Having a loving spouse and children has come to be seen "as a crucial part of what makes life worthy and significant." Lotte has a menagerie, but just really wants a baby. Is the connection with animals or nature in and of itself necessary and significant, or merely a tool towards the family as meaning-conferring?

Arguments against subjective relativism have been popping up around me. In an article in the most recent issue of The CCPA Monitor, Ed Finn voices his concerns about the decline of collectivity in "Triumph of individualism a defeat for society as a whole." And there it was again in Mark Kingwell's The World We Want; he also wants us to work on a "project of universal justice." Okay - I know these aren't astounding ideas, but it's weird that it keeps coming to mind over and over this week. It's like an I Heart Huckabees coincidence or something. Kingwell and Finn see the need to dismantle special interest groups in order to focus on the community as a whole.

Kingwell throws in the caveat that he is a straight white male and all. But insists, "I still believe a language of individualism can be politically useful if, but only if, its limits are constantly acknowledged and any tendency to eliminate otherness or difference is ruthlessly resisted. What must equally be resisted, however, is the celebration of particularity at the expense of larger political goals, the sort of self-regard that closes off all rational challenges by pointing out that the challenger is not a member of the particular group in question."

Can we access any collective ideas when we're all immersed in trivial details of our ordinary lives? We've lost interest in the bigger stuff. Well, perhaps it's more likely that most of us never had any interest in the first place. That was the path of the elites, while the peasants worried about the mundane. But now the few interested in Truth are shut away in ivory towers or cheap basement apartments, and the people that make the headlines are those who know how to make a fashion statement or craft a sound-bite.

If we're all created equal, if we all have equal value, then nothing's special. But it feels arrogant to suggest a few people are actually right, and the rest are really wrong. Everyone's voice must be heard, must count as we develop policy.

And I thought of all that during the film, watching these people, so self-absorbed, and so miserable, suffering through their lives with each other. They desire, and often get what they desire, but it still leaves them mostly miserable. Craig warns his wife near the beginning to stop thinking that there's one thing that will make her happy. This time it's a sex-change operation that she's consulting an allergist about. But of course Craig doesn't heed his own advise and gets sucked into the delusion that Maxine is the one thing that can finally make him happy.

And yet the film is so enjoyable to watch that I can watch it over and over again. It's a something I can connect to. It awakens dormant feelings and ideas that swirl around begging to be organized - somehow.

Very Bad Things

I just finished reading an excellent book, The World We Want by Mark Kingwell. Near the end, he's talking about morality and how to live, and he brings up three films to illustrate immorality: Reservoir Dogs, Go, and Very Bad Things. I loved the first two movies, but hadn't seen the third yet. Then I spied it on a reduced shelf at the grocery store and watched it with eager anticipation.

Yuck.

Ok, there were some laughs here and there near the beginning. But it was so distasteful I was left shaking my head through most of it. And let me remind you, I like The Three Stooges and South Park and American Pie, and Grandma's Boy, and Harold and Kumar and many other moronic, sophomoric films. I do not have a pretentious, politically correct sense of humour. I love a good laugh at someone else's expense. But this was horrid. Roger Ebert agrees. But his review focuses on parts that didn't stand out as most offensive. What really got me was the ending. Maybe he's not allowed to comment on the end of film because it gives too much away. But I can. Spoilers to follow.

The movie follows five guys who go to Vegas a week before the wedding of one of the guys. One of them accidentally kills a stripper, and they decide to bury her in the desert. Then a security guard has to be killed too. One guy starts losing it, and his brother accidentally kills him. Then one of the guys, Christian Slater (whom I loved in True Romance), the rational one of the bunch at first, starts killing off the rest of the guys and a wife who might know too much. Now this is a plot that I typically enjoy watching. But it sucked. The wife, Jeanne Tripplehorn (I remember her as the wife in The Firm), was good. I was sorry she got killed off. Then her kids get left to be cared for by the soon-to-be married couple.

Here's the part I just can't get over. At the end, the guy gets married, more stuff happens, then he and a guy his new wife hates both survive a car crash. They're both left in wheelchairs. One of the children they are guardians to is disabled. The disabled kid keeps falling over. The new husband falls over in his wheelchair. And the other guy keeps spinning around in circles in his wheelchair. Cameron Diaz, the new wife, watches all this, mouth agape, and runs out screaming to writhe in the street between the closing credits. What. The...?

Steve Martin can fall over in a wheelchair and I'll laugh my head off. But there was nothing funny in this scene. It was disturbing to me that it was presented as a joke. And it all makes me wonder precisely what the difference is. Siskel and Ebert suggest the characters just weren't developed enough for us to laugh at them. That might be it. We feel badly for the husband. He just wanted to get married, and all this happened to him. He wasn't bad enough for such a tragic ending to be funny. And if we hated Cameron Diaz's character, maybe we'd laugh at her freak-out. But we barely got to know her.

And what I wonder more, is what's Mark Kingwell doing even mentioning the piece of crap in his brilliant book?

Always read the reviews first, kids.

A Feminist Critique of Superbad (You Heard Me)

I was reading some ideas from bell hooks on positive male role models in mass media. She was listing examples of characters who made a good attempt at escaping patriarchal roles over the course of a film. She listed Life as a House and Good Will Hunting as examples of this paradigm shift.

That's all well and good, except I hate those movies. I found them both to be sappy, contrived, boring, tear-jerky crap. "It's not your fault...It's not your fault...It's not your fault...It's not your fault..." I get it already! Ya, I know it was his technique, but his technique made me start reading the paper as I watched the movie.

But you know what movie I really like - enough to see multiple times with different people even? Superbad. Call me low-brow or juvenile, but I love this movie. BUT is it a good feminist film? Let's take a look! (Spoilers galore, but that won't really affect your viewing pleasure - really.)

First let's use the Mo Movie Measure as a guide: the movie has to have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something other than a man. Well, two girls speak in the background about how to get booze for a party. That might fit. But that misses the spirit of the rules I think. It's disheartening how many films focus on men with nary a woman in sight except as dates. This movie really doesn't help that cause. However, I don't think bell hook's choices fit either. Some movies focus on guys' experiences together, and that's okay. Unfortunately, I also tend to wince at many female-focus films (Steel Magnolias immediately comes to mind). There are good ones out there that fit the criteria, but that's a different post.

So if we've accepted that the movie is focused on guys, what else determines the feminism factor? One criterion that is important is the extent to which the main character develops away from traditional patriarchal roles, and I think the character of Seth does a pretty good job of this over the course of the film in many ways, eventually becoming a model of male feminism in action, sort of.

The big lesson Seth learns is that women are human beings, not just toys that work best well-lubricated with alcohol. He's a pig for most of the movie, working all the angles to get laid, but comes to some semblance of an epiphany after myriad comments from Evan and finally a good talking to by Jules, the object of his objectification.

But even along the way, as a pig, Seth is pretty enlightened. His description to Evan of his hoped-for sexual encounter with Jules is all about him, "going down on her for a couple of hours...she'll go out with that!" His sexual desire is not centered on his orgasm, but on his ability to give pleasure. From friends' comments on the one-night stand circuit, it seems he'd be above and beyond.

At the end, after getting dissed by Jules, Seth gets teary. Jules notices, and he tries to hide it, but he actually pulls off crying in public. He isn't made to look pathetic or passive or wimpy. He's a guy's guy who's getting a bit emotional. A feminist man should be able to act in ways typically ascribed to women and not be made to appear any less of a man for it. Cool.

Together Seth and Evan's relationship illustrates a profound ability to express their feelings, like when Evan laments, "Just imagine if girls weren't weirded out by our boners and stuff, and just wanted to see them. That's the world I one day want to live in." And later they make the bold move to say the "L" word to one another in drunken snuggliness. Then, after a stereotypically awkward morning after, they even elect to continue hanging out together despite their disturbing memories of the previous night's admissions.

Finally, Seth and Evan have a couple of run ins with angry drunken idiots and corrupt cops. Both times, their choice of action is to run like hell. I admire this choice. In too many movies, the plot is driven by a revenge motive after a humiliation or threat. This movie doesn't go there, but ignores the bullies completely, avoids the violence instead of adding to it. There's no shame in walking away from a fight - really quickly - and we cheer them on.

Evan doesn't cut it as a good feminist role-model on his own however. He's moral and means well when he wants to stay to help out Fogell, or when he makes sure to have nice lube for her pleasure, but he's so passive he gets dragged into doing the wrong thing: deserting Fogell despite his quiet objections. This is sensitive nice guy pseudo-feminism. Feminism takes courage to act rightly, not just meekly suggesting what's right. Even when he defends Becca he's more whiney than insistent. However, he does get kudos for his Jimmy-Stewart-in-Philadelphia-Story "there are rules about that kinda thing" later on when he stops a very drunk Becca from having sex with him even though he's dying for it.

Now, the whole premise of the film is that these guys are desperate for sex and go out of their way for even a glimpse of body parts (a jog-by to see a new breast reduction). Some will toss the film for that alone, refusing to see such sexist trash. But how is it sexist to want to get laid? I question the notion that sexual desire is anti-feminist. Sex is a powerfully pleasurable thing we don't need to stop enjoying in order to promote a message of equity, in order to stop rape and assault, in order to be heard. It's amazing that we're made such that what one person wants to do to another because it turns them on, actually turns the other on too! That kind of symbiosis is to be celebrated, dammit. So I certainly don't fault guys for hoping to be a part of it all.

My only concern with Seth and Evan, based on their longing look back after their final parting in the film, is that I fear the ten-year sequel will look like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. One of them will have a frustrated wife who has to listen to old stories of her husband holding hands with a teammate across the beds the night before a big game. Can they actually connect with the women they long for, or just with one another? Only time will tell.

Canadian Content

I saw three movies lately that are all Canadian-ish. So, I'll be like the CBC and play up the Canadian content. (Very few spoilers - a bit in the very last sentence.)

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to try to be a good man and how to discern what that really means. Men don't have much in the way of really positive role models. To what extent can a guy successfully tease less, yell less, shove and kick less, without a strong alternative offered that doesn't come across as wimpy? Then I saw this beautiful film, Lars and the Real Girl. Don't avoid it because it's about a guy who dates a blow-up doll; I promise they don't have sex (she's religious).

(Ryan Gosling was born in London, Ontario, then grew up in Cornwall.)

The part of the film I want to download and play on a loop is when Gus, the older brother, is explaining to Lars how to know when you stop being a boy and actually start being a man:

"Well, it's not like you're one thing or the other, okay? There's still a kid inside but you grow up when you decide to do right, okay, and not what's right for you, what's right for everybody, even when it hurts.... Like, you know, like, you don't jerk people around, you know, and you don't cheat on your woman, and you take care of your family, you know, and you admit when you're wrong, or you try to, anyways. That's all I can think of, you know - it sound like it's easy and for some reason it's not."

The best part of this speech is he says it all as he's making dinner, then continues after he excuses himself to do some laundry when he hears the dryer buzz. Being a man is not about being the most powerful, being waited on, being the one who can take on all others or the one who gets to call all the shots. It's about being strong and courageous enough to do what's right. That's really hard work, and it's not acknowledged enough when someone rises to the challenge. But it's also not about being perfect. It's about trying your damnedest to get it right once in a while.

The next movie had a fascinating depiction of a not-uncommon triangulation between mother, son, and husband. Ages ago I bought the movie Spider out of a bargain bin. Then the other night, by chance, I decided to give it a try. I had just made it through Eastern Promises, which is brutal but very good, and I needed something to take my mind off it before going to bed. It was a Cronenberg double-bill. Spider, the main character, just got released from an "insane asylum" to a half-way house. As he scribbles in his journals, the film flashes back to his childhood to when his problems first started. As he hit puberty, he started to see his mom as a sexual being, and his dad as the cause of the change, the one who turned this woman from a doting mother into a "slut," actually believing his dad killed his mother then brought home an impostor to live with them.  It's all very Freudian.

(David Cronenberg was born and raised in Toronto.)

It's necessary to see people in three dimensions. I don't believe we can love in part - that we can decide we'll love only the bits we like about a person and hate the rest. We have to love the annoying or disturbing parts too. We all get to a point when we see our parents as human beings separate from us. It can be a difficult step, and many never quite make it.

Being a mother often includes being nurturing, caring, warm and loving. Being a woman often includes being sexual and sensuous, even enjoying a bit of hedonistic excess. But can we be accepted and loved when we're not in our desired role?  That's the trick.

Finally, I saw Juno. What a delight. I actually think the soundtrack with songs by Kimya Dawson really made the film. It's got a fantastic female lead, and the love interest is a guy who's reserved but not passive. He actually shares his feelings without looking ridiculous, and he refuses to be stepped on. In a nutshell, girl meets boy, girl ditches boy, girl makes an effort to get boy back again. But what hit home for me was how she got him back.

(Both Canadian!)

Relationships can't always survive hanging on to a few initial expressions of affection: the poems and letters, home-made trinkets, or even a three-month-salary ring.  We sometimes need on-going reminders of acceptance and concern; we need gestures.

Not much beats a mailbox full of tic-tacs.

Adaptation

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds."  (Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)

Love is only possible where people can be vulnerable with one another and trust that the other will be protective of the exposed areas.  Or is it?

Adaptation is one of my favourite film partly because I've had a thing for Nick Cage since seeing Wild at Heart and Moonstruck, but more importantly because of this one exchange between two twin brothers (or within one person as some suggest):

Charlie: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.

Donald: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.

Charlie: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was really sweet to you.

Donald: I remember that.

Charlie: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. It was like they were making fun of me. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.

Donald: I knew. I heard them.

Charlie: How come you looked so happy?

Donald: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.

Charlie: She thought you were pathetic.

Donald: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

Charlie: Thank you.

I'm not even entirely sure how to interpret that, but on a gut level, it offers a hopefulness that it's not so hard to love without expectations. But is it really possible to take pleasure from love for one who loathes us in return?

Unpopular Movie Reviews

I caught up on some movies I've been meaning to watch. Three in fact: Children of Men, Babel, and Night at the Museum.  And, I'm not sure why, but my opinion of these films isn't quite meshing with the real reviews they're getting. It could be, of course, that the paid reviewers don't know shite. You be the judge.

I rarely have the time to see a lot of movies. And it seems the number of films available is increasing exponentially. So I only go if a film gets at least three stars in the Globe and Mail. In fact, if Liam Lacey likes it, I'm guaranteed to like it. Up until now.

Spoilers below. Be warned.

(Although this view of winning films might not be something new. I must admit I was just like Elaine, from Seinfeld, watching The English Patient. Borrrring. I just couldn't connect to the characters in a meaningful way. Or when I read Life of Pi, which everyone raves about. I really liked the religious discussions in it, and the idea was interesting. And I loved the whole philosophy of interpretation and choice in narratives. But I could care less about the character. I had no emotional involvement with the book at all, so, as far as I'm concerned, it wasn't a great novel. His whole family died, and I didn't feel remotely sad for him. Eh, life's rough.)

Children of Men was acceptable. It kept me interested. I liked the feel of the movie, like an early 60s British film. And I loved the soundtrack. But it wasn't amazing or anything. It made me think of Escape from New York and Logan's Run, two other not-so-amazing movies. Just a guy and girl running from everyone, never sure who they can really trust. And, oh yeah, this time there's a baby that's a big deal to everyone in the world. I guess the premise of there being only one baby born after 18 years was too far-fetched for me to really get emotionally involved with. And everyone seemed so doomed from the get-go, that I didn't allow myself to get too attached anyway. I was ready to see them get picked off one by one.

Babel got a bunch of nominations for awards so it must be good. Apparently. But holy cow is it ever going to end? It felt like it was dragging on forever. And it was so bloody predictable. Of course they're the parents of the little kids. And of course the gun was from the guy the cops are looking for. Ya, ya, everybody's connected and we're all affecting one another all the time, blah blah blah. And isn't the jumping from one disparate plot to another to another just getting to be old hat by now?

I didn't care if the shot tourist survived or not. Whatever. The kids dying in the desert might suck, but I didn't know them that well. The boys playing with gun? Well, what did you expect, dad, giving the kids a gun and all? However, I was quite taken with the sexually-precocious girl. And I was outraged that we didn't get to see the final note she gave the cop. I really want to know what it says. I wonder if her dad was sexually abusing her at all, given her aggressive nature in that way. Or was it a suicide note? Out of the whole film, she was the only character I cared about at all. The rest were just in the way, annoying me, making me wait to see her scenario play out. Alone, that one girl's bit could have made an excellent short film. Altogether, not so good.

But, of course, because I'm regressing to a ten-year-old, I absolutely loved Night at the Museum. I was on the edge of my flipping seat, I kid you not, so concerned was I of the fate of these animals and tiny people. It's got that whole, "clap your hands if you believe so Tinkerbell can live" thing going on, which is okay and all. But more importantly, I've lived this job. I know what it is to be too cocky for my own good, and I know how it feels to have not read the instructions and to have to work from the seat of my pants. I do it every day! And, he keeps thinking and tries another new thing the next day, screwing up but still doing his best. That's what we do.

It falls apart a bit when he figures out exactly how to keep everything running smoothly. I prefer the idea that he'll keep having to think up new ways to make it all work. That resonates more with me. But then it might never really feel over. How can a Hollywood movie end if the problems aren't all solved to a fault?