February was the month I bought a Wii. I blame it on Mike getting me all excited about video games. I couldn't quite justify a PS3 purchase so I settled for the family-friendly option. Wii boxing also burns more calories than catching up on Criterion titles.
I've been on a contemporary streak so far this month. All 80s+ films.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, like all of Hughes' high school films, highlights the best part of public schooling, the friendships that make such a hellish place tolerable. FBDO perfectly captures the dreamlike intensity of just hanging out with friends. It is an ode to the triumph of liberty and liberal self-education over against the dreariness of bells and hall passes.
The Hole has many trademark Dante-isms. What should have been an excellent Eerie, Indiana film plays out too often like an episode of Goosebumps. All of it resolves too tidily. For all of the well-crafted scares, there's little depth to a movie that's supposedly making us face the abyss in our own basements.
Sleepwalk with Me is an honest portrayal of a guy who chooses a career in comedy over a stable relationship. This is all well and good as long as Birgiblia's failures at connecting with a romantic partner aren't taken as normative. I don't think they're presented as such, but I do think that his story is a fair microcosm of a larger generational story being played out in the broader culture right now.
The Do-Deca-Pentathlon wins lots of points for being 2012's best film featuring an arm wrestling match. As Jeff knows, these gems are too few in number. The Duplass zooms that Brandon hates are worse here than in JWLAH. I hope you all can forgive the zooms and give this one a chance. I've slowly become a Duplass fan.
Like Jeff, I'm a Martin McDonagh fan. I saw one of his plays (Lonesome West) performed in Binghamton last year. Seven Psychopaths has all of the wild moral and verbal flourishes of a McDonagh script and McDonagh direction. The interweaving of meta-narrative conceits and semi-aware characters living out a story of their own making as they search for material for a proper script is all deftly handled. It's certainly a lot of fun to watch. I'm just not sure that it adds up to all that much in the end and I don't feel a burning need to re-watch it any time soon. I watched In Bruges three times in a row a few years ago. I was hoping to be enamored like that again, but it didn't happen. Also, in my imaginary Oscars world, Sam Rockwell has already won best supporting actor.
P.S. Brandon, I don't think there are any libertarians in CR5FC.
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