Netflix weekend

[ellen_datlow]

I decided to work this weekend so didn't go out at all yesterday and won't go out today (except later today for a quick run to the mailbox and pet store around the corner). However, I did watch movies:
Underworld, which I knew would be dumb and trashy but I enjoyed anyway for what it was: dumb and trashy with a cutie in it, Scott Speedman, and cool leathers worn by Kate Beckinsale. Then I watched Syriana which (contrary to some viewers--my parents, for example--I had no problem following. I didn't expect to "enjoy" it and I didn't, but found it interesting. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know about economic-politics in the western world and how they negatively affect every other place on earth but it was pretty good.

Last night I watched Junebug, which I had problems with while watching it and haven't fully digested how I feel even now. Told mostly from the pov of a sophisticated gallery owner from Chicago who specializes in outsider art and her trip with her new husband down to his suburban North Carolina family. The trip is being made more so that she can see the art of someone her scouts have discovered than to meet the family (George hasn't been home in three years before this).

It's not a culture clash comedy although there is some of that. It feels as if the writer had no idea where he was going with his characters.

The mother comes across as a hostile bitch--possibly because her two sons are not what she dreamed of: after all one has left home, not returning for three years, and only coming back because he's in the area anyway. And the other is living at home with his pregnant young wife, having dropped out of high school and working at what looks like a minimum wage job. This latter I loathed as a character--he's totally closed off with so much ever-brimming anger that I could barely keep from yelling at the screen to tell him to get a fucking life. He behaves like a sullen visitor in the house.

The best things about it are Embeth Davidtz, who plays the art dealer in surroundings more foreign than any she grew up with (character was born in Japan and raised internationally before moving to Chicago) with an understated lovely irony and Amy Adams, who is a red-headed firecracker of an immature motormouth mother- to-be.

This movie was almost universally lauded as somehow being more honest than most about families and small town living, but I don't buy it. I'd love to know your opinions if you've seen it.

And to cleanse the palate I watched Pom Poko (thanks Eugene) about the raccoons of the Tana Hills outside of Tokyo who are losing their homes to overdevelopment by humans. They turn to the ancient art of shape shifting in order to "scare" the humans away.

It's wonderful and very moving. I was especially taken with the constant transforming of the raccoons from realistic looking raccoons to kind of cuddly walking-on-two feet raccoons, to Japanese warrior raccoons to raccoons disguised as objects or people. The whole movie is very clever and a strong commentary on environmentalism and the dangers of unrestricted human growth.

Comments

Amy Adams reprised the role in ENCHANTED

[zainybrain.livejournal.com]

I felt like the wide-eyed innocence and fascination with the world that Amy Adams is being lauded for in ENCHANTED (which is cute, but Not All That) is a variation of the role she played in JUNEBUG. Maybe JUNEBUG was harder to get into than most movies because it was so much more of an ensemble piece. It seemed like Embeth was the stranger in the strange land (N.Carolina) so we'd sympathize with her. And I did, up until she blew off supporting her in-laws during a family tragedy so she could get a very distasteful and nutty naive/folk artist to sign with her gallery. But then there were things like her husband singing religious songs at the church potluck supper, and her mother-in-law giving advice about husbands at the end. And the saddest thing, Amy's character having her loss. By the end of the movie, Amy's character became the heart of the story for me, and I've always assumed that her stealing the story was partly why she got the Oscar nod. Weird trivia: Alessandro Nivola, who played Embeth's husband in this movie, played her brother (!) in MANSFIELD PARK, one of the Jane Austen movies.

Re: Amy Adams reprised the role in ENCHANTED

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I've heard mixed things about ENCHANTED. It sounds as if perhaps her turn in JUNEBUG wasn't as notable then if she's a one-trick pony. I guess we'll see what she does in her next movie.

I'm not sure what you're saying about the husband singing the religious song and her mother- in- law giving advice. The mother in law to me seemed clueless about her own family and had no place giving advice to anyone.

It seemed to me that Madeline was learning about her husband from his family (and maybe seeing why he "escaped") which is not surprising considering they barely knew each other when they married.

I checked Netflix too so saw that about Nivola and Davidtz's MANSFIELD PARK connection ;-)

Re: Amy Adams reprised the role in ENCHANTED

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I mean that I read the IMDB...