Movie Mania

As promised, a few sentences about some of the other movies I watched over the "break." Again, in no particular order.

The King of Kong made me feel incredibly awkward. But, I was also totally caught up in the drama, complete with hating on Billy Whatisface. Tool.

Kit Kittredge was a pretty typical kids movie in that it had about five happy endings. Almost everything that they could wrap up in a pretty little bow, they did. It was atypical in that it did stay true to the one story line that seemed like it would be too false, too forced with a happy ending. It was also atypical in that some of the drama leading up to the happy endings was kinda heavy. The moment where Kit sees her dad in the soup kitchen...crushing. I also thought it was a well-done, age-appropriate depiction of the Depression. Y'know, a good intro to that period in history for an age group that's a bit too young for The Grapes of Wrath. Timely, that. Also, I kind of love Abigail Breslin. I hope she makes it through the whole child actor thing relatively unscathed.

Slumdog Millionaire was fantastic and I don't feel like I can do it justice in this blog. I keep starting to type something and then furiously clicking backspace. I start to write about how uplifting it is, but then I think that makes it sound cheesy. Or I start to write about all the aspects of this movie that make it wonderful, how you'd never know Dev Patel is new to the big screen or how even the music is great, but effusive praise always sounds kind of hollow. Let's just sum it up this way: director Danny Boyle is truly an amazing storyteller.

Diner didn't really do it for me, but it was fascinating to see Mickey Rourke in his glory days. So much is being made of him right now, his fall from grace and his comeback, but none of the hype over The Wrestler meant anything to me because I was too young to notice him the first time around.

The Mistress of Spices and Marigold were both just fluffy brain candy. Mistress of Spices is based on a book that I may pick up at some point. It has that whole magical realism thing I tend to enjoy in novels, but which felt kind of awkward and weird on film. Marigold has kind of a "meta" thing going on; it's about an American actress being cast in a Bollywood film. A love story and some interesting dance scenes ensue.