Movies I have watched “lately”

Below are the movies I’ve watched in the last little while. My favorites were probably Monsters, Elegy, and Insomnia, though I’d recommend all of them.

Mary and Max
Union Station
Network
Monsters
Elegy
Clerks
Paper Heart
Insomnia
Inside Job

Valentine's Day Movie Recommendations

Laura and I watch a lot of films and this week we watched a couple that are perfect for Valentine's Day. The first, Adam was originally a Sundance film that screened in 2009. (It was actually the only movie I've tried to go standby for but didn't make it in.) This last week we finally Netflixed it, and I was substantially more impressed than I had expected to be.

The plot revolves around Adam (Hugh Dancy), a 29 year old New Yorker with Aspergers syndrome, and his romantic relationship with Beth (played by Rose Byrne of Sunshine and 28 Weeks Later fame).

Initially, that premise made me a little skeptical. I originally wanted to see it at Sundance because I was going in a group of people and a love story seemed relatively likely to please everyone. Then, I put it on my Netflix queue mostly because I hadn't been able to see it before and I wanted to know what I had missed. I was also skeptical about another movie about a guy with a mental disorder. After Tropic Thunder's hilarious and pointed critique of that trope, could any movie do mental problems without seeming pandering or trite?

In this case, Adam mostly avoids the problems that Thunder was making fun of. If the film deserves any criticism it'd probably be for trying too hard to be hip (but what Sundance film doesn't have that problem?) Still, it's an affective story with a truly remarkable, if not wholly satisfying, ending. It demonstrates that romantic comedies can be inventive and refreshing and is well worth a watch.

You can watch the trailer here.

My second recommendation is Conversations With Other Women starring Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter. The film came out in 2005 and is presented entirely in split screen. Though Laura and I were initially worried that that approach would get tiresome and annoying, we both got used to it quickly. As the film goes on split screen is used to show the different characters' perspectives, or to show how one person might be feeling two ways at once. Some critics were divided on this aspect of the film, and it's definitely an experiment, but I ultimately felt like it succeeded.

The film also displays some fine acting. I'm used to seeing Helena Bonham Carter as a crazy, Tim Burton-character, but this film shows off her feminine and emotional side to great effect.

If you're into film making, Conversations will also be interesting because it was the first film to have the Final Cut Pro logo at the end. They shot the whole thing digitally and edited it mostly on a laptop, which is still pretty unusual (the special features go into more detail on this topic, though I have to admit that by 2005 I thought a lot of filmmakers had made the switch to Final Cut Pro).

Anyway, it's a well acted and entertaining film. It's not a romantic comedy, per se, but it is a romance and it's funny in some parts. More importantly, it's all about how two people give and receive love over the course of many years.

Sandra Bullock: Gradual Feminist or Closeted Misogynist

A few nights ago I had the dubious pleasure of watching Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal, the second of her three films this year. Along with Bullock the film stars Ryan Reynolds and is a fairly formulaic romantic comedy: a man and a woman initially dislike each other, are forced to spend time in one another’s company, finally manage to separate only to discover that they’ve fallen in love. It’s the same story over and over again. However, The Proposal throws a curve ball into the mix: Sandra Bullock plays the role of the older, more powerful professional, while himbo Reynolds is the plucky underling who falls in love as a result of his superiors coercion. In other words, The Proposal reverses the typical romantic comedy gender roles.

Or does it? Though Sandra Bullock, as a vile and reviled publishing boss, is definitely playing against her type she can’t really shake her Sandra Bullock-ishness. The role she’s been given is basically trying to be Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, but Bullock really just comes off the same way she does in every post-Speed movie. Though this tension between her supposed evilness and her obvious charm actually makes the movie more entertaining, it also begins to undermine the legitimacy of The Proposal’s gender reversal. Much like Miss Congeniality, this latest film casts Bullock in a man’s role but is narratively concerned with removing her feminist veneer to reveal the awkward, tomboyish Bullock archetype. In that sense it’s not unlike several of Barbara Stanwyck’s films that cast the golden era starlet as a spunky working girl who nonetheless ends up in a very traditional relationship.

The process by which Bullock’s feminist veneer is removed further raises questions about the feminist slant of the film. Though the initial gender reversal is laudable (Reynolds, for example, is accused of sleeping his way to professional success much as a woman might be in a less progressive movie) the end of the film basically ends like any romantic comedy with the man proposing to the woman. (This is not a spoiler, as the inevitable end of any romantic comedy is a heterosexual coupling.) It’s trite, but in this case it’s also particularly disappointing because The Proposal had seemingly already done away with that particular convention when it had had Bullock getting down on her knees to proposal to Reynolds earlier in the film.

In any case, The Proposal begins with what could be an interesting premise but slowly unravels everything it has going for it so that by the conclusion it’s just business as usual. Hollywood often takes a lot of flack for supposedly being “liberal” and trying to push a progressive agenda. When some (overly conservative) person watched the film they probably lamented the fact that the film seems to endorse woman’s rights and gender equality. However and unfortunately for those of us who actually believe in those things, the film actually condemns them and advocates the gender disparity status quo that it might have been trying to dispel. In the end, then, The Proposal shows that men are in control and women are just schemers trying to find a husband.