My Five (or so) Fave Movies of the Year (So Far)

Today, for A Month of Favorites we get to journey outside the bookish and share some other faves from this year.  My mom and I go to see tons of movies, and there were more than a few excellent movies to be seen this year, a lot of them based on similarly good books.  Here are the great movies that distracted me from my reading this year...

This Is Where I Leave You - I missed the boat on reading this book before it, but I loved the movie.  I love movies that can make you laugh and cry literally at the same time, and this movie about a dysfunctional family sitting Shiva for their father totally did it.  It was serious at times and sad at times and funny at times and sometimes sad and funny at the same time, and, in my humble opinion, it was brilliantly cast.

St. Vincent - I saw the preview for this one a couple times and almost let it pass me by because of the perpetual worry about comedies airing all their funniest moments in the preview and then having nothing to offer once you've ponied up your hard earned dough at the movie theater.  Not so here.  Weirdly, Melissa McCarthy's not the comic relief.  The kid that plays her son and Bill Murray, as the world's unlikeliest babysitter, definitely are, but here's another movie that's masquerading as a comedy but is actually touching enough that you'll be wiping your eyes by the time the credits are rolling.  I'm not going to spoil it because you should see it.

Fury - There are some movies you go into expecting to like.  There are other movies you end up going to instead of Gone Girl because your dad never wants to go to the movies but finally figures out one he wants to see.  Lots of World War II movies don't quite capture the full horror of war, this movie seemed to get that Germany by the end of World War II was a pretty dreadful place to be, especially in tank, and showed it.  It's definitely a testosterone movie of a sort, but with a bunch of A-list actors putting in time in a World War II tank, the ante is definitely upped.  I didn't expect to like it, but ended up thinking about it long after it was over.

Jersey Boys - There are other movies that you see because you meant to see The Fault in Our Stars but end up being too disgustingly late for the show because you were, uh, buying books at a giant yard sale next door.  This is that movie.  If you're behind the curve, it's the movie version of the musical version of the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  I seriously had to stop myself clapping after these guys finished their songs on screen.  Loved.  Loved much more than The Fault in Our Stars (the movie, not the book). 

The Giver - Hey, I did read this book before I saw the movie.  A looooong time before I saw the movie.  I hear the movie's nothing like the book, but that didn't bother me so much because I read the book when I was, like, 12, and I am nowhere near twelve anymore.  I loved the story of humans learning to feel again, even if feelings make for an "imperfect" society.  It translated to the screen very nicely in the opinion who read the book more than 15 years ago.  ;-)

I may have mentioned that I saw a crap ton of movies this year, so here's 5 more good ones for luck...

Gone Girl - Here's another book I totally failed to read before seeing the movie.  Ben Affleck was good, even though I've never really liked him all that much, but Rosamund Pike, could she have been any more perfectly freaking creepy?

Interstellar - Downgraded to runner up for making my brain hurt with all this talk of complex physics concepts.  I mean, ouch, my brain.  Other than that, this was yet another high quality mind*bleep* from Christopher Nolan, bringer of films such as Inception and Memento, wherein you don't quite know what is happening or how it's happening, but you find in the days following the viewing you can't stop thinking about it and being impressed that somebody could make so many different plot strands and difficult concepts work together to make a movie people still want to see.

Divergent - Er, I finally read the book right after seeing the movie.  Another book fail.  But it says something that I enjoyed the movie depiction of dystopian Chicago enough to finally plunge into this series.  Loved Shailene Woodley and Theo James cast as the main characters. 

The Lego Movie - A token animated contender.  I love cartoon movies that throw in some humor for the grown-ups.  Also, who spent most of the late winter with the "Everything Is Awesome" song stuck in their head?  Who has it back in their head now?  You're welcome.

Mockingjay (Part 1) - Loses because the first part is the draggy part of Mockingjay anyway, and then they stretched it out to feature film length.  Still has that Hunger Games awesome though, and I can't wait to see the conclusion!

Frighteningly, there are still plenty of contenders to kick these ten off their pedestals.  I mean - Unbroken, The Hobbit, and Into the Woods are ending the year with a bang and definitely stand a chance to unseat some of the top five ten.

What's the best movie you saw this year?

Check out Estella's Revenge for more miscellaneous favorites today! 

World War Z...

....is a perfectly good zombie movie, which I would have liked had I not met its much smarter cousin, the book it was supposedly based upon.

I've figured out the problem.  I'm not so terribly against movies that aren't faithful replicas of their books.  I realize that you're driving at a different audience and you have time constraints and you need a little tighter plotting with a movie.  When a movie isn't 100% faithful to its book, I'm not usually all that bothered.  Unless, I just read the book.  Then it's like a slap in the face.  If I read World War Z a couple of years ago and then saw the movie this weekend, I probably would have happily accepted the movie for what it is - an exciting, entertaining zombie flick catering to the masses who are dying to see a great action movie this summer.  The zombies are acceptably scary.  Brad Pitt makes a good, quick-thinking hero.  There are lots of those tension-filled moments when you have to look at the screen through your fingers because you know a scary zombie is about to drop in "unexpectedly."  It's a good movie, but having finished the book just this month, I set myself up for all kinds of disappointment.

This is why I no longer wish to be that person who reads a book in preparation for the movie's debut.  It serves me poorly.  I would be better off in most cases not reading the book at all before its movie comes out than to read it shortly before the movie becomes out.  Once the fog of forgetfulness sets in, and I'm happy to recognize a general resemblance between book and movie, I'm a forgiving viewer.  Before the fog of forgetfulness?  Then I'll just want my money back because they took a sort of "thinking person's" zombie book and turned it into a more or less run-of-the-mill zombie movie in comparison.  The two are so dissimilar with the book lurking in my recent memory that it practically seems that this movie was just stealing the name of a book for a recognition boost with little effort to re-create virtually any of the book's situations on film.  Admittedly, I guessed that World War Z would be a tough book to take to the big screen, but it's almost like they didn't even try.

Happily, the one great effect of this going to see movie World War Z is that it actually made me appreciate book World War Z much more.  I finished it earlier this month and found it to be a good read, but I didn't realize just how much I was captivated by it until strikingly little of it was to be found in the movie.

Told in the style of an oral history, Max Brooks' World War Z tells the story of the zombie wars from the early days when the zombie infection is just starting to take hold, through the Great Panic when it seemed that humanity stood little chance of surviving the hungry undead, to the eventual battlefronts as humanity makes a stand against an enemy almost too dead to kill.  As Brooks "interviews" many of its survivors, the zombie war and its global implications take shape to dramatic effect.  Brooks' novel is not an action/adventure thrill ride, rather it is a bizarrely thoughtful and thorough exploration of the unexpected toll the zombie apocalypse takes on an unsuspecting world and the many ways it shapes the planet's future long after the zombie plague has been taken in hand.  Brooks leaves no stone unturned exploring the psyches of a soldier in a failed publicity stunt of a battle against zombies in Yonkers, a twisted capitalist who invented and marketed a worthless vaccine, the man who re-united Russia into a newly formed religious state, the supposedly "heartless" man whose cold and calculated plan is the only one that can save South Africa from total zombie takeover.  Out of Brooks' many encounters with survivors from around the globe emerges a painstakingly creative, comprehensive and believable tale about a world that looked a lot like ours that was ill-prepared to combat  a threat that's never been seen before, a world where humans are hunted almost to the verge of extinction, and a world where those humans ultimately have to find a way and the fighting spirit to adapt and conquer the terror of the undead.

Truly, World War Z is a thinking man's zombie novel, a novel that can easily satisfy your inner zombie nerd and your inner international relations dork at the very same time.  If you want a story that makes you think about life, the world, the future (uh, with or without zombies), and everything, read World War Z.  If you're more in the market for an action-packed thrill ride with a sympathetic hero who will stop at nothing to save the world and his family from zombie apocalypse, watch World War Z.  Ah, but to enjoy both, this might just be one of those rare occasions where you would be better served watching the movie first and enjoying it on its own terms before you tackle the much (much!!) more thorough and compelling book.

Did you read the book?  See the movie?  Both?  What did you think?

On "Sisters," Mist, and Employment

This year, I'm thankful that Thanksgiving is over. My imposing "sister" has been safely packed off to her home without too much stress. My tactic in dealing with her was to welcome her to be here but not to cater to her every whim, so if I was planning on watching a TV show or playing a game with my family or helping my grandparents with their computer I went forth and did so and found that not up-ending my life on her behalf made it a good deal easier to deal with her over-intrusion into my life. Upon her arrival I discovered that her boyfriend had insisted on being the gentleman and bringing her down and that she would have just as gladly taken a bus. I can't very well blame her for that and was again reminded that her boyfriend, a very decent if rough around the edges sort, has a much better basic grasp of manners in the presence of my family than she seems to, so I was able to embrace his presence a bit more - that and he was great to me when I was living in Boston, so I feel like a jerk for being so bent out of shape about him coming. He thanked my mother profusely for dinner, watched whatever TV show we were watching without complaint, and proclaimed himself to be homicidal ("I'd kill somebody to get another piece of this!") over the dessert my mom prepares every year - and so won our love because my "sister" did none of the above. Another year passes without confrontation, so I've got until next year to work through my feelings about this situation again.

On a slightly more bookish note, I went to see The Mist this past weekend, yet another film adaptation of Stephen King's abundant body of work. Usually I pass on horror-type movies. I'm ridiculously squeamish and can't stand horror movies' portrayal of people being unreasonably stupid. Alas, I had read the story and enjoyed its depiction of how people react in the face of the unknown and the knowledge of their imminent deaths as a result of said unknown, and I couldn't help but be curious about how it would look on the big screen. Needless to stay, the film version took a perfectly decent story and screwed it up. Yes, the element of putting a group of people in a room with only their imminent deaths and big, scary creatures from the unknown to think about remained intact. The human part was actually rather well-executed. The people start out working toward a solution and end by fighting to the death with each other in a way somewhat reminiscent of The Lord of the Flies. Marcia Gay Harden turns in a great performance as Mrs. Carmody, an insane evangelical Christian sort, who is really, really loathesome and far scarier than gigantic spiders and creatures with distressing-looking tentacles as, I think, Stephen King intended.

Nonetheless, I left the movie feeling disappointed. Despite the success of the human part of the story the horror part was just well...horrible. Full in the knowledge that something is waiting outside to kill them, the characters don't rush to their destination, no, they lollygag and ogle the ominous otherworldly mist until the promised gigantic bug/tentacled creature/monstrous spider attacks them leaving just about everyone paralyzed in fear until the body count can mount sufficiently at which point some blessed soul will finally have the presence of mind to bash the evil creature with a big stick giving the few remaining survivors time to get away. Run, people! What's wrong with you? Even that aside, my biggest bone to pick, by far, was definitely the artsy, ironic and depressing ending which is a rather considerable departure from the original story not to mention being painful to watch. Even had I not read the story, this ending would have driven me to an intense dislike of this movie. Having read it, the ending becomes that much more unbearable for its unwarranted change from the written work.

Finally, in news that should make me happy but really doesn't - the last document that will enable me to become a temp for a major local hospital which is one of the few truly good places to work in my area of residence arrived in today's mail. Yes, I'm happy that I can say that I've got a job again and that I will have income and feel productive again instead of laying about fiddling with my computer and mooching off my parents, but gosh I'm bummed that I'll be spending the happy holiday season learning everything there is to know about working in healthcare administration which is rather a lot. I fear that my brain has atrophied over these last few months of unemployment, and it's just going to be a little much to take. Not to mention I won't have nearly as much time to fiddle around with my computer. And read. And write. And buy Christmas gifts. And enjoy happiness.

Okay, so maybe I'm just scared of doing something new. And maybe I feel a little bit like you do when you've gone on a nice and enjoyable vacation only to find it's ended a few days short of when you expected to as a result of unpleasant circumstances. I'm 23, I've been working in some respect for about 7 years...is it really too early to retire?

Movies and Music and Designer Dogs, Oh my!

So, this is kind of a weekend in review post, I guess.

My parents just sold the video rental store that they used to own, and since then we haven't been too wild about watching movies. As it turns out, 11 or so years of watching every half decent and every piece of crap movie ever launched on to the market really burns you out on movies. So we had a bit of a movie drought. And enjoyed it. By the way, if you happen to be considering investing in an independent video store, let me save you a lot of trouble....don't. The time you put in and the money you lose (to Netflix and Blockbuster and Wal-Mart) sure aren't worth it. Ugh.

But when I saw that Reign Over Me and Evan Almighty were coming out, it was time to call a stop to the drought. Evan Almighty was all right....Bruce was better. I'm a Christian, so it's nice to have some humor that I can feel special because I "get it." But yeah, the end was kind of lame, and this was one of those movies where the preview kind of wrecks all the funniest moments because by the time you get to watching the movie, you've seen 'em all.

I saw Reign Over Me at the theater with a friend. At the time, I wasn't sure if I loved it, but it kept me thinking, and when I saw it was coming out on DVD, I had to see it again. And I think I love it. I love Adam Sandler doing serious stuff. I can't help myself. I'm a huge fan of Spanglish and 50 First Dates (which, while not totally serious, was more serious than your average Adam Sandler movie up to that point). Having seen it a second time, I'm pretty sure I love it. Sandler does a great job of bringing this super damaged character to life, and it's good to see that the plot follows it through. You can't fix something like this in a few days, and the movie doesn't attempt to do it. That's why it's a great story. One you can really envision happening in real life and one you feel like you can sympathize with and relate to even if nothing of this magnitude has ever happened to you or will ever happen to you.

The biggest disappointment of the night, however, was looking up the soundtrack on Amazon. Here I am thinking that the soundtrack of this movie is going to be great - Pearl Jam covering "Love, Reign O'er Me," a couple of excellent Bruce Springsteen tunes, and some other stuff I'd love to have all together on a CD. But what do I find when I look up the soundtrack? It's just the instrumental score. I'm all for instrumental scores and I have a few soundtracks of them that I love. But what a bummer to see that all these great tracks aren't a part of it. So now, not only can I not simply ask for a CD for Christmas, I also have to track down the songs and download them, because they're in my head now, and I'd much rather they were in my CD player!

In other randomness, I wish I was the guy who had the brilliant idea to breed a pug and beagle together to make a puggle. I mean, can you imagine? Here you are sucking $500 or more out of people for something that folks probably wouldn't have even adopted from the pound a couple of years ago. My aunt and uncle (who apparently have money to spare) bought one. It's a girl and they named it Pluto. Now disregarding the obvious problems with the confusion caused by the name which is the same as that of the Disney dog who is, indeed, male.... the last thing this family needs is a dog like this. The poor thing has no idea what to do with herself, she's crazily hyper and has about as much discipline and training as well....as my aunt and uncle's kids. And, if you haven't gathered this by now, that's minimal. So spending time with this family, plus there psychotic dog is akin to keeping company with a traveling circus. And this dog, I think the pug side of the equation won out. It just looks like a really tall pug. It's not as cute as it is frickin' weird looking. And I fear that the whole puggle craze is going to be akin to the dalmatian craze. I worry that everybody who's "anybody" is going to run out and get one of these before they realize quite what they're getting into and that they're going to need to actually exercise and actively train this type of dog in order to enjoy a happy life with it, and when everybody realizes they're not the right type of dog for them, they're just going to end up a bunch of poor "mutts" waiting at the SPCA for someone to adopt them. And what a bummer that is....

But on a happy note, hey, I just wrote in my blog. Maybe it's not a lost cause after all!