Friday's Movie of the Week

              Every Friday we will have a movie post where we talk about the movies that are released that day, the movies we saw the past week, recommend a movie (and you should certainly take our suggestions, as we are snobs with great taste (except Clayton)), and use this space to ramble about anything movie related that might catch our fancy. What a run on sentence. 

        This weekend the movie The Roommate is coming out. It's carrying on the new tradition of former Friday Night Lights stars appearing in horrible cheap horror movies. First Jason Street in Prom Night, then Tara in Legion, and now Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) in this piece of crap. I haven't seen the movie of course, and I won't, but I can already tell exactly what the movie will be like. It's one of those cookie-cutter PG-13 horror movies that are for junior high students to go to on dates or in groups. They all sit together, talking the entire time, with a few, "hilarious" guys shouting stuff at the screen, and then whenever a jump scare occurs they all scream and then all burst out laughing for having screamed. It's a truly terrible experience. 

The Roommate 2

My favorite thing about The Roommate is the advertising. The TV spots talk about how, "Every year 18 billion teenagers become college roommates with someone they've NEVER EVEN MET. What if that person was a nutty, jealous psychopath?" I can only assume it's not a great idea to tell your audience of 14 year old girls, "You know your knew best friend? She's probably jealous, trying to steal your boyfriend, spying on you, and will eventually kill you." Now that I think about it, the plot of Prom Night is (I might be making this up entirely as I think I watched this but certainly not while paying attention) that some Mexican janitor is peeping at girls in the shower or something and gets put in jail and then escapes and goes to kill the girl who turned him in. Let's take people in their early teens (the dumbest age you will ever be) and make them think everyone they know is trying to kill and rape them. 


         Also released today is a movie titled, "JAMES CAMERON PRESENTS SANCTUM PRESENTED BY JAMES CAMERON." The movie is about people going very deep into underwater caves and, shockingly, things go wrong. It's based on a true story so I'm sure not too many people die or I would remember this being in the news (you can see I do a lot of research here). The fact that they're pushing JAMES CAMERON and THREEEEE DEEEEEE! so hard in all advertisement for this movie, and that it's coming out in February means the movie sucks, but I bet it will at least be pretty to look at. 


         In the past week I've seen:


     - Lolita
     - The Ghost Writer 
     - Dogtooth
     - God's Country
     - Afghan Star
     - Die Hard


         God's Country was so interesting, and very nearly great, but seemed to end a bit too abruptly. A French documentary filmmaker travelling through Minnesota in 1979 stops in a tiny farm town to film an old lady he sees working in her flower garden, and ends up staying in the town for weeks interviewing the local farmers, police, veterans, nursing home residents, and youth of the town. It's just amazing to see the people, and the styles, and to hear them talk about their lives, and their futures, and their hobbies, and their history, and their religion, and everything that makes up life for a small, conservative country town. Then, the filmmaker returns to the town 6 years later, in 1985, and interviews that same people he met before. It was really incredible to see how people had changed, and how they stayed the same. Everyone was a little bit fatter, their hair a little bit thinner, and all more stressed and unhappy. The age of the independent farmer was drawing to an end, and the town's economy was severely affected as the price of milk dropped more and more across America, and Reagan was quintupling the deficit. 


        One farmer had become a right wing nut of sorts, wearing a Washington D.C. shirt, talking about the founding fathers, and attempting to get all farmers to band together and stop paying taxes. The hippie type son (who lived in California in 1979, but his parents lived in the town) who had burned his draft card now lived in New York and was a business man who sold software. The young couple with three kids who had a farm of their own are now contemplating closing it down and the wife has had to go to work. It's a really interesting movie but the 1985 part was just far too short and some of the people who I really wanted updates on had moved. It's definitely worth a watch though.


          However, our recommended movie of the week is a movie that Clayton watched, the Korean film, "Mother." I saw this movie last year and it is so, so great. It's probably my favorite movie of 2010, or at least in the top 3. The plot centers around an older Korean woman and her son, a mentally challenged (or severely autistic or something) teenage son. She's understandably extremely protective of him, and when he's accused of a murder her mothering protectiveness kicks into overdrive, with the lengths she'll go to in order to clear his name getting pushed further and further. The final shot in the movie is unforgettable, and the first thing I asked Clayton about when he told me he had seen the movie. The actress who plays the titular character is phenomenal. I don't know if it's because she's Asian and I've never seen her before, but I had to keep reminding myself that she's an actress, and supposedly very different in real life. In my opinion she should win the Oscar this year and every other year (or at least as many times as Meryl Streep has won).

         Do yourself a favor and see this movie. Korean cinema is very different than American cinema, with the tone and narrative structure being distinctly foreign. It's really difficult to compare Mother to an American movie because there's not really anything like it, not in terms of subject matter, but in terms of the way the story is told. There aren't any narrative tricks or anything, but there's a very Korean sensibility that I've only found in other Korean films. I can't imagine this being remade in America. Mother is available on Netflix Instant and every person in the world should watch it, subtitles and all.




NOTE: (We hope to have daily columns such as this one but are still ironing things out and figuring what works and what doesn't. I know this particular post was far too long and boring, but in the future the Movie of the Week post will be briefer and more entertaining.)