Talk Nerdy to Me

Movies: The Theory of Everything

I originally began this review by referring to Dr. Stephen Hawking as a "straight up baller"...but somehow, it seemed disrespectful to do so (although given Hawking's sense of humor, he might actually appreciate it). But any way you look at it, Hawking has lived a remarkable life. Diagnosed at age 21 with a motor neuron disease similar to ALS, Hawking was told he had two years to live. Hawking was basically like "fuck that" and is still alive today at age 72. Hawking is a theoretical physicist who has won countless awards and honors for his work. He is one of the most well known scientists alive today and is also an accessible writer who is able to translate his incredible knowledge for the average reader. And he did it all while battling a disease that took away his ability to walk, move, and speak without the help of a device. Such a disease would crush the spirit of many people, but not Stephen Hawking.

But what many people don't know about Hawking is that behind this remarkable man stood a remarkable woman. The Theory of Everything is the story of Hawking's relationship with his first wife, Jane Wilde, whom he met in college and who married him despite what was essentially a death sentence when he was first diagnosed with motor neuron disease. What fascinated me about this movie is how much time it devoted to Wilde (it is, after all, based on her memoir, Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen) and how sympathetic it is to Wilde's struggles to raise a family (she and Stephen had three children together) with a severely disabled spouse while also maintaining an identity of her own. Talk about "having it all"!

Wilde and Hawking were married from 1965 to 1995. Hawking was diagnosed in 1963 and had progressively less control over his own body pretty quickly. Obviously, this couldn't have been a picnic for Hawking himself, but you can also imagine the emotional and physical turmoil Wilde went through. The world of 1965 was not remotely handicap accessible, nor did it look too kindly on "unconventional" relationships, which Hawking and Wilde most surely had. To be a wife in 1965 meant raising children and deferring to your husband. But what if your husband couldn't feed himself? Or hold his own children without assistance? And Wilde had interests and passions of her own. She was a very intelligent woman who eventually got a PhD in medieval poetry. I admired how The Theory of Everything did not make Wilde out to be a saint, nor did it paint her and Hawking's marriage as all roses and champagne.

However, as a PG-13 film--and a very tasteful one at that--The Theory of Everything holds back from giving the audience the entire gritty picture of Wilde and Hawking's relationship. The issue of Hawking's ability to father children is brought up in the most innocent, PG-rated way possible. A college buddy asks Hawking if the disease affects "everything", to which Hawking replies "No, different system. Involuntary." But the film doesn't even get close to examining how a disabled person might actually have sex (for an excellent film on that very topic, please watch The Sessions, incidentally one of my most-read [and favorite] reviews!). Likewise, we see very little of Hawking's day to day struggles with things like bathing, eating, and using the bathroom. Now, I realize that your average moviegoer isn't thinking "Sure, he's a world-renowned genius and all, but what I really want to know is how Stephen Hawking deals with taking a shit." I get that. Yet seeing the intimate details of what it must be like to live in a disabled body, or be in love with/married to a disabled person...well, I feel like it would have made for a more interesting and humanistic film. But I'm not everybody.

And to be fair, we do get to see some of the odder aspects of Wilde and Hawking's relationship. Specifically, the introduction of Jonathan Jones, a local choir director who befriended Wilde and offered to help out Wilde and Hawking in an unofficial caretaker capacity and also as an additional father figure for their kids. He actually moved in with the family, which was highly unconventional (and pisses off Wilde's in-laws) to say the least.

Spoiler alert? (does it count as a spoiler if it's just someone's real life?)

Jones and Wilde got married after she and Hawking divorced in 1995. The movie plays pretty coy about whether or not they got it on before she and Hawking separated.

/end spoilers

The film has an ace in the hole in Eddie Redmayne's portrayal--no, embodiment--of Hawking. All the acting (including Felicity Jones as Wilde) is solid, but Redmayne...holy shit. He already looks like Hawking, but the actor's physical performance is amazing. I read an interview with Redmayne where he revealed that he spent so much time capturing the way Hawking is, well, contorted, in the later stages of his disease, that the muscles on one side of his face became noticeably stronger by the end of the shoot. Redmayne's performance really is the centerpiece of The Theory of Everything and totally deserves an Oscar nod.

Before I went to see this film, I read a review that referred to it as "neutered". As I point out above, the film shies away from anything too shocking or depressing about Hawking's disease and his marriage to Wilde, so I understand the criticism. But I was still very pleasantly surprised by the movie. It exceeded my expectations and made me want to learn more about Stephen Hawking. It may air on the side of gentle and romantic, rather than gritty realism, but it's a solid film that pays respect to the personal and romantic life of a man known more for his brain than anything else.

4 out of 5 stars

Oceans of Time

Movies: Interstellar

I'm going to keep this one short because, honestly, I don't feel that I have too much to add to the conversation about Interstellar. The film has been out for nearly a month and those who were champing at the bit to see it probably already have. The critical reception has been, not tepid exactly, but not hot. I find myself in agreement with the general consensus of the critics: Interstellar is a movie that aims for greatness and achieves goodness.

If anything can be said of Christopher Nolan's latest film, it is definitely ambitious. Not just visually, but intellectually and emotionally. You get the feeling that Nolan envisioned this film as his magnum opus. Perhaps that ambition is what held the movie back from true greatness. It feels overstuffed, as if Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, who wrote the movie were like "Ok, we gotta have stuff about wormholes, and the love between a father and his daughter, and a message about environmental stability, and a sarcastic robot, and a message about how love is a force that transcends time, and a giant tidal wave, and and and..." My first impression upon leaving the movie theatre was that if Nolan had held back a little bit, or maybe had a tighter focus without the lofty philosophical messages, the movie would have been better.

Visually, Interstellar is amazing. There are any number of beautifully imagined scenes, including travel through a wormhole, a stop on a planet with tidal waves a mile high (this part of the movie was probably my favorite, and was also legitimately terrifying), and a climatic scene near the end that dares to imagine what five dimensions would actually look like--if you had a God's eye view of time itself. Accompanying these scenes is Hans Zimmer's pounding organ music score which is perfect for the film. It invokes a sense of religious reverence and adds to the feeling of mankind's puniness in the face of an endless universe. As a work of art, Interstellar succeeds.

As a work of philosophy, not so much. Beyond the science of wormholes and black holes and relativity, there is a message about love and human connection. The idea is that love is more than just a feeling and that it is in fact a force of nature itself that can even transcend time. The idea is voiced first by a teary-eyed Anne Hathaway, playing an astronaut who tries to convince her fellow space travelers to use the little fuel and time they have left to travel to a planet that her lover, Edmunds, set out to explore ten years earlier. She argues that her love for Edmunds is perhaps a signal, across the universe, that they will find the resources they need on his planet. On the one hand, wow, what a beautiful message. On the other hand, barf. I don't know why I reacted so skeptically to this part of the movie. But I just couldn't buy it, and I thought that this emotional overlay--"love conquers all, including the theory of fucking relativity"--just took away from the more interesting aspects of the film.

So that's my conclusion. Interstellar is a beautiful, but overly ambitious film. I found it unfocused and confusing at times, and wish Nolan had exercised a little more restraint. I guess the worst you can say about Interstellar is that it's a movie that aims for the moon--and lands among the stars.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Bring the Noise

Movies: Whiplash

I don't know how to begin this review except to take the Lord's name in vain as a way to express how much I loved Whiplash. Goddamn, that was a great movie.

Directed by Damien Chazelle, Whiplash is a small masterpiece. Unlike the huge epics and blatant Oscar bait commonly released during this time of year, Whiplash is small, unpretentious, and comes out of nowhere to get up in your face and slap you upside the head with its intensity. Everything about it--the fresh jazz soundtrack, the quick cuts and sharp camera angles, and the ferocity of both J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller's performances--is designed to leave you breathless.

Miles Teller plays 19-year-old Andrew Neiman, a first-year at a prestigious music conservatory who dreams of being a great jazz drummer like his idol, Buddy Rich. Andrew is plucked from his lower level music class by Terrence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) and given a shot as a drum alternate for Fletcher's elite studio band class. It becomes apparent on Andrew's first day in studio band that Fletcher is manipulative and abusive toward his students--he humiliates and insults the members of his (suspiciously all-male) class for the slightest mistake and drops and adds new members on a whim. After Fletcher spends class screaming at Andrew, slapping him in the face, and throwing a chair at his head, Andrew goes home and practices the drums until his hands bleed. So begins the emotionally abusive, practically sadomasochistic relationship between the two men: one who wants to be "one of the greats" and the other who wants to discover and, in his sick way, mentor a revolutionary musician.

There are plenty of characters in Whiplash, but they all serve as props to the central relationship between Fletcher and Andrew. This is one of the only weakness of the film. Andrew's father starts out as a solid character--taking his son to the movies, arguing that being a musical genius isn't worth it if you end up dead at 34 (as Charlie Parker did), and coming to his son's rescue when it seems that the young man might be losing it. But ultimately, Andrew's father only serves as the audience's surrogate: the voice of reason Andrew stalwartly ignores as he becomes more and more invested in meeting Fletcher's challenges.

Andrew also has a love interest who certainly could have been fleshed out as a character in her own right. Instead, she is merely a prop to reveal Andrew's youthful arrogance. He dumps her early on, implying strongly that she'll just hold him back from his destiny.

The dismissiveness with which the secondary characters are treated is mirrored in the way that Fletcher treats the other drummers in his band. Once Fletcher sees Andrew's potential, he uses the other drummers (there are three guys, including Andrew, vying for one part during a climatic scene) as a way to manipulate Andrew into performing even better. While Andrew appears single-minded in his drive to become as excellent a jazz drummer as humanly possible, Fletcher is equally focused on bringing out the talents of one special player--even if it is detrimental to the band as a whole.

Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons turn in brilliant performances. Simmons is terrifying as Fletcher, and he teeters on the brink between playing a sincerely passionate man who wants to push students beyond what they ever believed they could achieve and playing a cartoon villain. In fact, Simmons does occasionally let his inner cartoon villain come out, but he does so in such a masterful, believable way that you totally buy it. I totally bought that the young men in his studio band would put up with Fletcher's bullshit and abuse in order to have potential doors open for them down the line.

Teller, who took drum lessons in order to learn how to fake-play in this movie, captures the masculine bravado of a 19-year-old boy who is deeply talented and knows it. Andrew lives in a black and white world: it's all or nothing for him. He will either be one of the greatest musicians of his generation, or he'll be nothing.

Taken together, Simmons and Teller's performances almost blend into one. Their anger, their passion, their talent, and their disturbing willingness to use one another to accomplish their goals swirls into a fucked up teacher/student relationship like I've never seen before. And what I loved about Whiplash is Chazelle's unwillingness to come down against Fletcher's abusive teaching tactics and Teller's unhealthy single-mindedness. In fact, the end of the movie seems to suggest that Fletcher is right to push his students to their extremes and to pit students against each other in order to uncover the true talent of one particular student. The film is a blunt, stark look at what it takes to be the best. Whiplash asks "is it worth it to give up your life in service to your craft?" and it answers its own question: "for a true artist, yes."

5 out of 5 stars

You Don't Know Jake

Movies: Nightcrawler

I have been in love with Jake Gyllenhaal as an actor and as a stone cold fox since I saw Donnie Darko in the early 2000's. At the time, Gyllenhaal often played the weird boy next door (and occasionally, the weird boy next door in a bubble). Over a decade later, Gyllenhaal has proven more than capable to branching out into a wide variety of roles, many of which have been increasingly gritty. What I love about Gyllenhaal is that he can play his masculinity softly or he can play it hard. He's equally believable as gentle cowboy Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain or keyed up marine Anthony Swofford with an itchy trigger-finger in Jarhead. Whether he's going the buzz-cut macho route, or the shaggy-haired nerd route, Gyllenhaal has played a lot of good guys.

But now, in Dan Gilroy's shocking, sickening, and exciting Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal plays something entirely different. He plays a character who is more of a shark or a vulture than a human. He plays a sociopath with no social skills, a predator without the sexy camouflage to hide his true intentions. His character, Louis Bloom, is many things--but he most certainly isn't a good guy.

Nightcrawler opens with Louis beating up a security guard and taking his watch after he gets caught trying to cut through a wire fence. The film offers no explanation as to where Louis came from and if he has a family or friends. The director alienates the audience from Louis from the word "go". Gyllenhaal's appearance further alienates us: the actor lost about 20 pounds for this role, and boy, does extreme thinness not suit him. His normally soulful eyes bug out crazily and his face is all  painful, sharp angles. His clothes don't fit, his hair is greasy. Boy is a hot mess is what I'm saying, but it works well for the character--a man who stays up all night, driven by his obsession with finding gory video footage of car accidents and crimes to sell to a low-rated news station.

Louis is trying to break into the seedy world of freelance crime journalism. He buys a police scanner and a camcorder and uses sheer audacity to get in real close to victims of auto accidents, muggings, and shoot-outs. Louis' complete lack of empathy and boundaries allow him get great shots of people dying, covered in blood. Where would Lou be able to sell such shocking footage? To a snuff video website? Nope. He sells his graphic videos to a news station that runs the stories on the morning news. As a fellow crime journalist (played by Bill Paxton in a fun little role) puts it, "if it bleeds, it leads".

After making a few hundred bucks, Lou is inspired to take it up a notch, which includes sexually blackmailing Nina (Rene Russo), a local TV news veteran who heads up the graveyard shift at a low-rated station. After propositioning Nina, he points out that while she can walk away, so can he, leaving her station gasping like a fish for the audience ratings his bloody videos once provided. Dude knows how to woo a lady. Lou also hires a naive assistant (Riz Ahmed) who is too green to understand the lengths Lou is willing to go to get great footage. For example, beating the ambulance to the scene of a car accident and moving an injured person around to get a better shot.

Part of the fun of Nightcrawler is seeing how far Louis will go to manipulate circumstances to serve his ambitions, and the climax of the film is extremely intense. My jaw was definitely hanging open. Nightcrawler has been compared to the films of David Cronenberg, and I was reminded of his film Crash (no, not the movie about how everyone is racist, the one about people with car crash fetishes) during a car chase scene that was almost sexual in its adrenaline-pumping intensity. While I've seen far more psychologically disturbing films than Nightcrawler, this movie was a lot more physically affecting (heart pounding, hands gripping the armrests) than any movie I've seen in a long time.

Nightcrawler isn't perfect. It would have been nice if the film stood on its own merits as a thriller, but director Gilroy insists on rubbing our noses in the message (news stations manipulate viewers with messages of racism and fear!). The film feels derivative at times--almost cliche. I've read reviews that compare Gyllenhaal's performance to Robert De Niro's in Taxi Driver (quite the compliment to Gyllenhaal!) and Rene Russo's performance to Faye Dunaway in Network. While the film is most definitely good, it's not really fresh or unique.

In spite of the quibbles I have about Nightcrawler, the sheer force of Gyllenhaal's un-glamourous, wacko performance really carries the movie. The actor strips away his beauty and his leading-man machismo to reveal a feral animal underneath. The excitement of watching an already talented actor uncover new depths is as much of a thrill as any grisly video footage Louis Bloom could find on the mean streets of L.A.

4 out of 5 stars

For Better or For Much, Much Worse

Movies: Gone Girl

"I'm the cunt you married. The only time you liked yourself was when you were trying to be someone this cunt might like. I'm not a quitter... I'm that cunt."


 Spoilers in this review

If you like your movies mean and raw, you'll feel as though you've hit the jackpot with David Fincher's latest cinematic masterpiece. Based on Gillian Flynn's best-selling, genre-defying novel, Gone Girl is half whodunit procedural and half cynical portrait of a marriage gone terribly wrong.

Gone Girl is expertly cast. Ben Affleck was born to play Nick Dunne--an attractive charmer who is also a douchey cheat of a husband. Rosamund Pike is a cipher as Amy Dunne, Nick's wife. There are different interpretations of Amy, but I considered her to be a sociopath, plain and simple. The inability to empathize and the drive to use other people for whatever her needs are at the moment.

The secondary characters are very strong. Kim Dickens has a plum role as Det. Rhonda Boney, a cop who is on Nick's side at first, but slowly loses faith in him as more "evidence" that he killed his wife mounts up. Tyler Perry works his slick charm as lawyer Tanner Bolt, notorious for defending "wife killers". Neil Patrick Harris plays Desi Collings, Amy's obsessive ex from high school--a spoiled rich boy who "rescues" Amy in her moment of need, only to trap her in a gilded cage of a luxury lakehouse. Things do not end well for Desi, as Amy is not the kind of girl you lock up.

                                                       Image courtesy of variety.com

 Like so many other films by Fincher, Gone Girl is beautifully shot in cool tones (with the occasional blast of dark red blood) and tightly paced. Fincher isn't afraid to let his movies run long: Gone Girl clocks in at 149 minutes, which is modest compared to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's 158 minutes and Zodiac's 157 minutes. Yet you never feel that his films drag. He doesn't waste precious minutes, using quick cuts and fades to jump back and forth in time. We see flashbacks of Amy and Nick's sex-fueled and seemingly happy courtship alongside Nick's descent into guilty husband hell as the court of public opinion turns on him. We see Nick coming to horrific realizations as he solves his wife's 5-year anniversary treasure hunt while, not too far away, Det. Boney and Det. Gilpin (Patrick Fugit from Almost Famous, all grown up!) discover the final piece of evidence that damns Nick as the killer. The film moves quickly, but is not convoluted (or maybe that's because I read the book and knew every twist that was coming).

But enough about the technical aspects of the film. Let's address the burning questions about Gone Girl:

Is the movie (and the book) misogynistic?

Well, that all depends on your perspective. On the one hand, Gone Girl plays out like the wet dream of a Men's Rights Activist: it involves a bitchy, controlling woman who lies about rape and abuse in order to control and nearly destroy her husband. Ben Affleck utters a line near the beginning: "I'm so sick of being picked on by women." At the moment he says it, it comes off as the pathetic cry of a white, attractive man who didn't get *everything* he wanted. But as it becomes clearer what kind of woman he's married to, well, you actually start to feel bad for the guy. I mean, he's a run of the mill cheating husband and jerk, but he's married to a highly intelligent nutcase who uses her brains and body for evil. And that trope of the femme fatale is both sexist and (yawn) played out.

And yet...

There's something about this story (it's more blatant in the book, but you hear it loud and clear in Amy's monologue about "the Cool Girl") that gets to the heart of a real problem women face--the pressure to identify themselves in relation to men. Amy Elliott Dunne may be a sociopath, but she most certainly does not let men define her. Or does she? Has she been the "Cool Girl" all along, only to throw off those shackles in the most dramatic and vengeful way possible? Is Gone Girl a warning to a male-dominated society that you can push a woman only so far before she pushes back?

Gone Girl is not a "feminist" film--unless your idea of feminism is a woman cutting a man's throat while he's in the throes of orgasm (which I'm sure is some people's idea of feminism!). But it can only be considered "misogynistic" when compared to the lack of more traditionally heroic roles for women in Hollywood cinema. If we had a much greater diversity of complex, interesting roles for women, Gone Girl's Amy Dunne would just be one of many options for how a female character can be. Also, isn't it kinda nice having a really nasty female anti-hero? We have so many Walter Whites and Don Drapers and Tony Sopranos. Why not have a female character who fuck and kill with the best of the boys?

Is the movie (and book) anti-marriage?

No. It's anti-marriage to psychopaths. While the movie is extremely cynical in regards to Amy and Nick's marriage, anyone who has an iota of respect and love for their partner will not be threatened by this film. More likely, they'll be relieved.


What else is this movie about?

Gone Girl less about women, men, and marriage and more about how the 24 hour news cycle manipulates people's emotions when it comes to current events. It's a film about how readily and easily people buy into stereotypes: the cheating louche of a husband, the pregnant, scared wife...and perhaps most damning of all: the idea that a white, beautiful woman going missing is more important than, say, ebola killing thousands of Africans or a tsunami leveling a city whose name we can't pronounce. Maybe Gillian Flynn is not only a mastermind at creating a tight, tense thriller...but at redirecting our attention to a fictional monster while subtly pointing out that we are the real monsters. Or did I just blow your mind??


Should I see this movie?

Yes. As long as you are ok with hearing a guy call his wife a cunt and seeing that wife murder a man (in the throes of orgasm!). I would not recommend this film for the squeamish, for people who hate women (if you hate women, I recommend these movies instead), or for any romantic couples on the cusp of a breakup. Otherwise, you're in for a nasty, acidic little treat that you'll be thinking about days later.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Entertainment Dump

Here is the Reader's Digest Condensed version of a bunch of movies, shows, and books that I've been meaning to review.


The Hudsucker Proxy

One of Joel and Ethan Coen's lesser known films, The Hudsucker Proxy is in a similar vein as O Brother, Where Art Thou? with its peculiar brand of absurd humor and magical realism. Tim Robbins, rocking a modest pompadour, plays a rube named Norville Barnes who gets hired to be the president of Hudsucker Industries after the owner of the company commits suicide. The scheme is to get investors to lose faith in the company so that the board of directors can buy up stocks for pennies on the dollar. But when Norville invents an "extruded plastic dingus"--you know, for kids--an item that becomes a wildly popular bestseller, the board of directors realize that their scheme might not pay off.


Co-starring Paul Newman as the oily Sidney Mussberger and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a fast-talking journalist, The Hudsucker Proxy is not the among the best of the Coen bros. films, but it's a solid little gem.

3.75 out of 5 stars

***

Jug Face

A strange indie horror film, Jug Face is about a group of families living out in the sticks who follow a cultish religion where they regularly sacrifice members of their group to a creature that lives in a pit. Young Ada finds out that she is the next sacrifice chosen for the pit and refuses to accept her destiny, causing havoc to those around her. There's also incest. Yay.

Jug Face is entertaining, but ultimately not very good or very scary (the special effects that reveal the thing in the pit are amateurish). The movie is more concerned with making fun of weird, provincial hillbillies than with building a creative and tense storyline.

3 out of 5 stars

***

Devil's Pass

Another indie horror movie with iffy special effects, Devil's Pass has the advantage of actually being scary. Filmed in "Blair Witch" style, with handheld cameras, the film follows a group of college students setting out to make a documentary about the events of the Dyatlov Pass Incident--a real-life mystery where a group of hikers all died under mysterious conditions in the Ural Mountains in 1959.

 Devil's Pass uses the facts of the actual incident to build tension that leads to an over-the-top climax involving a government cover up. The climax itself isn't as scary as the events leading up to it, in which the college students find themselves in increasingly dire straits as they retrace the steps of the Dyatlov hiking group. A worthwhile Netflix streaming watch.

3.5 out of 5 stars

***

True Detective

I had a couple beefs with this admittedly addictive HBO series, the main one being that women are treated like sub-human annoyances and sex dolls throughout all 8 episodes. Granted, the show looks down on the sexist and hypocritical way Det. Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) treats his wife, daughter, and mistresses, but it also doesn't really put its money where its mouth is by giving us a few strong, complex female characters. We get Hart's long-suffering wife, Maggie (Michelle Monaghan), and that's basically it. The way the show is written is misogynistic at worst and just plain male-centered at best.

HOWEVER. Stupid sexist bullshit aside, True Detective is, in fact, a well-written, extremely well-acted (especially Matthew McConaughey's portrayal of nihilistic weirdo Det. Rust Cohle), tightly-paced, creepy, addictive series. I can't deny that it's good watchin'. If you don't know the plot, I'll give it to you in one sentence: Cohle and Hart work together (despite massive personality differences) to solve the murder of a young woman whose death may have been part of a satanic ritual. Intrigued yet? Although I felt that there were certain threads to the mystery that were never fully addressed, the overarching themes of redemption, faith, and friendship give this series some meat. Let's hope women play a more central role next season.

4.5 out of 5 stars

***

The Disaster Artist

Those who know me know I'm a big fan of The Room--a laughably awful movie written, directed, produced, and starring professional weirdo Tommy Wiseau. The Room, unlike many other films that are simply bad, has a certain je ne sais quoi which elevates it to an almost artistic level of wrongness. The mystery of Wiseau--where he came from, what his motivations are--adds an additional element of strangeness to an already bizarre movie. So when The Disaster Artist, a memoir/tell-all by Greg "Sestosterone" Sestero (co-written by Tom Bissell), came out, I knew I had to snatch it up. And snatch I did.

Sestero interweaves his experience working on The Room (he served as line producer and also played Mark, the plum role of Johnny's (Wiseau) "best friend" who betrays Johnny by sleeping with his fiance) with the story of his own struggle to make it as an actor and how he met and befriended Wiseau. Sestero reveals tantalizing details from the set of The Room (the scene where Johnny exclaims "I deed naht heet her. Ees bullsheet. I deed NAHT. Oh, hai Mark" took about 4 hours to film) and even more tantalizing details about what might possibly be Wiseau's backstory. The book ends at The Room's premiere, which is a bit of shame since I would have liked to learn more about how The Room went from a shitty movie to a cult phenomenon. Sestero tries pretty hard to be even-handed in his description of Wiseau, but one wonders why he--and anyone else--put up with a man who has all the qualities of a delusional megalomaniac. Maybe because Wiseau had an inexplicably gigantic bank account? Probably.

The Disaster Artist isn't so much a tell-all as a tell-most. And Sestero's constant teetering between attempting to paint Wiseau as a latter-day Ed Wood and outright making fun of him comes off as disingenuous and condescending. However, the book is such great fun, with laugh-out-loud moments, that it's well worth reading for fans of The Room.

4 out of 5 stars

***

Bittersweet

I had heard a lot about Miranda Beverly-Whittemore's novel Bittersweet before I swiped it for $2 on Amazon. The story is about an average girl, Mabel, who gets sucked into the world of her very, very wealthy college roommate, Ev Winslow. After Mabel comforts icy Ev when her cousin commits suicide, Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer with her extended family at their estate in Vermont. "Bittersweet" refers to the name of the cottage Ev's parents give her when she turns 18. The Winslow estate is a chunk of land where each family member has their own cottage. Every summer, the entire damn place is overrun by privileged WASPs with mounds of juicy secrets. Sounds like a great read, huh? In truth, Bittersweet is good, but it just doesn't pay off. Mabel is encouraged by one of the older Winslows to go through family documents to find a mysterious manilla envelope proving ownership of a certain Van Gogh painting hanging in the dining hall. But that's just a red herring for the *real* Winslow scandals, which are much darker and much more overwrought. Think to yourself--what would be the most scandalous family secret for a gaggle of wealthy, upper-crust yankees? Whatever your answer is, it's probably one of the myriad family secrets that plague the Winslows in Bittersweet. The 400-page novel slowly, teasingly builds up to an overstuffed climax in which Beverly-Whittemore attempts to reveal all the Winslow secrets and tie up loose ends in about 20 pages. It's a shame since the novel is otherwise well written and decently paced. It's as if the author couldn't commit to one mystery or family secret and decided to just throw everything into a pot.

3 out of 5 stars

Movies in Which People Look and Act Like People

Movies: In a World, Enough Said


When seeing a movie, some people prefer that transparent glass wall Hollywood puts over so many films. They like their stars preternaturally beautiful, with impeccable wardrobes. They like slick action scenes and softly-lit love scenes. They like when the bad guys and the good guys are easy to tell apart. I'm not judging here, since I consume a certain amount of "basic" entertainment as well--I've been known to enjoy a certain multiple-camera sitcom that centers around a group of "nerdy" males in California and certain genres of literature that are, shall we say, formulaic?

However, when it comes to movies, I prefer my viewing choices to be realistic. I like movies where the bad guy gets away in the end. Or better yet, when there are no bad guys--just flawed humans. I like love stories with sad or ambiguous endings. The ending of Sideways, where Paul Giamatti knocks on Virginia Madsen's door...and we never find out if she opens it, or even lives there anymore? Perfect ending. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the most romantic movies to me because it's about accepting love KNOWING it probably will go sour in the end.

I like movies that reflect reality because it makes me feel understood. And it makes me less afraid of the ambiguity we so often encounter in our lives.

Two wonderful movies I saw recently capture reality in a way that is positive, life-affirming, and just fucking flat-out delightful. In a World... takes place inside the world of professional voice-overs. You know that booming male voice that narrates movie trailers? Someone gets paid big money to do that. And they're usually men.

Lake Bell (who also wrote and directed) stars as Carol, a freelance voice coach and daughter of Sam Soto--a well-respected professional voice-over person who is at the pinnacle of his career...and is pretty much a total misogynist. Carol dreams of becoming the voice of movie trailers, but her dad constantly belittles her dream and tells her that people just don't want to hear a female voice narrate movie previews. However, when Carol gets a shot at narrating the preview for a much hyped "quadrilogy" that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, entitled "The Amazon Games" (har har), she has the chance of proving her father and the whole voice-over industry wrong.

One thing that struck me about In a World... is how *real* the actors look. With strong features, a wardrobe that looks thrifted (and not in a cute way), and messy, unevenly dyed hair, Bell does not look like a typical leading lady. She looks like your best friend. Likewise, her sister (Michaela Watkins), brother-in-law (Rob Corddry), potential boyfriend (Demetri Martin), and professional rival (Ken Marino) are all recognizable actors who also happen to look like real human beings. It makes the movie so much more fun because you feel like you could actually hang out with the characters at a party and not feel completely alienated by them.

Also, the movie is just...different. And unique. It's blatantly feminist, with a woman trying to break into a male-dominated profession, but unlike so many similar-ish rom-coms (i.e. The Proposal) that attempt to be pseudo-feminist, Carol's love interest, Louis, has her back the entire time. Louis likes Carol and is nice to her and supports her professionally. He isn't her rival-turned-boyfriend. Isn't that fucking mind-blowing? Well, it is to me.

In a World... is just a delightful little film. It's funny, it's quirky (but not in an annoying Zach Braff type way), and it's very female-friendly. I recommend it to humans of all genders.

The other movie I saw was Enough Said, which is so bittersweet given that it was one of James Gandolfini's last movie roles before his untimely death. He's also absolutely adorable in it. Enough Said centers on Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, not surprisingly awesome and hilarious here, as she is in everything), a middle-aged, divorced massage therapist with a daughter about to go away to college. She meets Albert (Gandolfini) at a party and the two bond because he's also divorced with a daughter about to go to college. Even though she's not initially attracted to him, Eva goes out with Albert and they have a great time. They eventually get much closer and see the possibility of a full-blown romance.

But. One of Eva's new clients is the beautiful Marianne (Catherine Keener), who constantly bitches about her ex-husband to Eva during her massages. This ex was immature, overweight, clumsy in bed, etc. One guess who the ex turns out to be.

But even once Eva figures it out, she keeps Marianne as a client and purposefully milks information about Albert from her. Pretty soon, she begins to see Albert through Marianne's judgmental eyes.

Once again, we have a film where people look and act like people. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is, of course, very beautiful, but she plays a middle-aged mom realistically. She's into sex, but not a Cougar-ish sexpot. Gandolfini is not a typical leading man, looks-wise. He's heavy and balding. But damn, Galdolfini is hot in this movie. Why? Because he's funny, charming, confident, and real. Not slick. Beyond their looks, the characters also act like real people. Director Nicole Holofcener is pretty well known for her movies that appear plucked from real life. The script is funny, but not overly clever the way some Hollywood comedies can be. The characters' behavior is flawed--Albert really is a slob, and Eva behaves disingenuously after figuring out that Albert is Marianne's ex--just like real, imperfect people.

Enough Said can be a little stressful since you, the viewer, become invested in Albert and Eva's romance and don't want them to screw it up. But the film has a comfortable, lived-in feel to it, which is very nice. And its portrayal of romance is so anti-Hollywood. There are no pop-songs or montages to explain to the audience how they should feel. There's just a lot of talking and discussion among the two lovers, their friends, and their families.

If you're the type who prefers the glamorous sheen of big-budget mainstream movies, more power to you. Movie-going should be fun! But I highly recommend giving indie movies and slightly less glamorous movies a chance. You might be surprised. Enough Said and In a World... are two excellent films to start with--they're real, but they're not gritty or unpleasant. Give 'em a shot!

In a World... : 4 out of 5 stars

Enough Said : 4.5 out of 5 stars