Ok, so I haven't written in about a year and a half... but nonetheless, it's at long last time for today's movie

Today's Movie: The Straight Story

After the year and a half it has taken me to recover from the horrid piece of crap that is The Wedding Planner, I decided to write about one of my all time favorites next. David Lynch's quiet and subdued movie, The Straight Story, seems an unlikely movie from this master of the dark and disturbing. It tells the story of Alvin Straight, an elderly man from an Iowa small town who lives with his boarderline retarded daughter Rose. You are introduced to them quietly and unceremoniously at the start of the movie, and whereas Rose's character seems a bit overacted at first, Alvin's character comes across warm and endearing and that engages you in the movie right off the bat and makes you really root for Alvin Straight throughout the story. The storyline is basically that Alvin has a brother Lyle, to whom he hasn't spoken in 15 years. When news reach Alvin that his brother has suffered a serious stroke, Alvin decides that silly pride has stolen too much from them already and wants to make the trip to mend fences with his brother before he dies. But how to do it? He doesn't have a driver's license and in typical male fashion doesn't like anyone else driving his car for him either. He ends up building a trailer to bunk in, which he ties to the back of his 1966 lawnmower and takes off. The movie follows him on his journey from Iowa to Wisconsin, encountering many people along the way. We are given subtle peeks into the lives of those he crosses paths with and through the homemade wisdom Alvin shares with them, we get to learn more about Alvin and his life. We learn more about Rose and all the pieces about her behavior begin to fit together to form a character as whole and lovable as Alvin himself. The movie is very slow paced and quiet but it never gets boring. You really get to see the patience and determination Alvin posesses and you really see the beauty of how slow and steady wins the race. The journey takes him 8 - 10 weeks total, moving slowly along the highway, day by day getting closer to where he's going. Near the end of the movie, when you see him begin to get closer to where his brother lives, you also get to see the subtle excitement build up inside of him and the never overstated, quiet anxiety beneath. Is his brother ok? He was on the road for a long time, did he make it in time? It is never spoken, but you can virtually see it coming from Alvin's eyes. This movie focuses intently on the simple things in life, family ties and how the human spirit can overcome any obstacle and if we would only relax and give ourselves enough time, anything is possible. And it reminds you to not get caught up in the silly things. It reminds us how important family is and how anger and bitterness can still control our lives long after we forget what we're angry about. It tells you to mend fences and forgive and forget, don't lose what's most important because of what's least important. It's the ultimate feel-good movie without ever being corny or overly sentimental. It makes you want to call your entire family and tell them how much you love them. Whether you actually do or not, well that's left up to you, but the movie definitely makes you stop and think about it.

The whole movie more or less rests on the capable shoulders of the late Richard Farnsworth, who if he was born to play one role, the role of Alvin Straight was it. He was one of those actors where you could actually see the compassion and the emotion behind his eyes, he was never just reciting lines. He actually WAS his character, and that makes all the difference. A truly brilliant performance from a truly brilliant actor.
Also delivering a fabulous performance was Sissy Spaceck in the role of Rosie Straight, Alvin's mentally challenged daughter. Her character is a bit slower to come together in the movie and in the beginning it looks almost too dramatic, but as the pieces of the character begin to add up and fit the puzzle as the movie goes on, you begin to realize why she is the way she is and her performance becomes almost as moving as Farnsworth's.

This movie is so much more than just the sum of it's parts though, I can't even tell you. Due to it's slow pace and quiet, understated content it might not suit young children or fans of The Fast and The Furious, but for anyone who wants to see a truly moving masterpiece about the beauty and strength of the human spirit I couldn't tell you often enough to GET THIS MOVIE. But make sure you put your family on speed dial first, and keep the Kleenex close.

Today's movie: The Wedding Planner
Having seen the horrible p.o.s that this movie is, I am faced with a haunting question. It doesn't directly involve the movie's content per se as it's message was rather clear cut and forcefully shoved down my throat with a blunt, penile shaped object several hundred times during the hour and a half of my life that I spent watching this abomination. I am not the most productive of individuals however so the time wasted here is of no particular grievance to me as I would most likely have spent it doing nothing anyway.
Back to the question I'm left with here. Rather than asking what the makers of this flick were trying to tell me (as mentioned and graphically described earlier, the message was delivered). My question is: What the hell were these filmmakers, these deciples of Satan, trying to acheive by letting this beast of a movie loose on the open market where I would eventually and pretty much inevitably see it?
Before we get into this any further, lets take a look at a rough outline of the story. It's really quite simple. A very pretty but lonely, very professional but unfulfilled...wedding planner falls head over heels in love with a handsome doctor with southern charm to spare who happens to rescue her from a runaway dumpster (?). She doesnt know, however, that this man is the groom in the wedding she's currently planning for some billionaire family. This is of course the event to end all events and if she lands this account she'll be made partner at her wedding planning company (?). (Pardon me, but are there actually people who do this for a living?)
So needless to say, she cant drop the account and ends up picking out flowers and dresses and locations and godknowswhat with the happy bride-to-be, a gorgeous and successful career woman.
Our lovely wedding planner's father seems to be obsessed with weddings and if it werent so crucial to the storyline, somebody would have sent this man into counselling a long time ago. Because his beautiful, rich and successful daughter isn't married at the age of 30 he is OBVIOUSLY about to have a coronary at any given moment, and eventually finds her a man. He comes up with a ridiculously good looking model type who can't spell his own name and has a thing for male bonding, the kind that involves him pouncing on the nearest man and proceeding to beat the crap out of him. This is obviously the kind of man any girl's father would choose, right? And anything's better than his daughter being such a horribly old spinster with nothing in her life but a job she seems to derive great pleasure out of (super anal retentive chick) and Gucci shoes on her feet. Anyways...yada yada yada....handsome doctor man obviously loves beautiful wedding planner girl too, and gorgeous money grabbing career woman can go fuck herself in the end. And so can Maximus (or whatever!), the father's son in law of choice. And everyone lives happily ever after. Except for the two who got dumped on their wedding day, that is. But who cares about their feelings, the movie isnt about them anyway.

Why make a movie like this? Why put the time and effort into making something so completely shallow and uninteresting? Why why why why? Why not just make the trailer and leave it at that. The trailer was about as good, and much shorter -which in this case is an obvious advantage. The dialogue was crap, the story was crap, the characters were crap, the acting was crap and there was absolutely no chemistry between the leads. I've seen more chemistry between lab rats than anything between these two actors. The booty queen J.Lo once again reassured me that she's a terrible actress and Matthew McConoughey once again made me wonder why he ever left the farm.

But...back to my original question. What was the point in making this movie? What the hell were these people trying to do? They put so much effort into trying to make everything seem so friggin wonderful it makes me wonder what the hell they're smoking on. You'd think that in a town where people can't stay married for more than 24 hours they would have learned by now that it's never love at first sight...it's lust. Romance isnt effortless and happy endings don't exist. The only thing a happy ending means is that there's another one all the more horrid waiting just around the corner.

I mean...this movie is nothing. It does nothing. Says nothing. Means nothing. And yet, it's crowning acheivement is making me feel absolutely sick after sitting through it. Hating life. Hating people. Hating men. Hating women. Hating kittens. Why do they do it? These people are fuckin terrorists and they can damn well kiss my ass. And that's about all I have to say about this movie.