Celebrities on Ice

I'm a lucky, spoiled bastard who got to go to the Sundance Film Festival this year. Even if there's talk that the independent festival has become too commercial and is having its weakest year to date, it was nice to get away for a few days and pretend to be cultured. Before I get into the "feelings" and "thoughts" I had on being home and seeing family and friends, let's get through the important stuff: the film reviews.

I saw four movies over the course of two days. For the record, going in, only one of those movies was one I had requested when we bought our tickets in advance. In the end, I'd recommend all of them, but not necessarily to everyone.

1. Somebodies - I saw this movie at 9 a.m. on a Saturday, after going to bed after midnight on Friday and waking up at 6 a.m. to get to the movie in time. Thank Christ, then, that it was funny as hell. To give you an idea of how funny it is, I'll relay two scenes, both of which happen in the first 15 minutes. Scene one: The screen is black and some guy is debating whether or not he should go to church, and finally he decides that God wins by saying, "eh, fuck it, I'll get up." Any time you can talk about God and still swear, you're off to a good start in my book. Scene two: the college-aged main character is doing a voice-over about himself. As you see him taking a syringe and sucking vodka out of a huge bottle and then injecting said vodka into an orange and then taking that orange and sticking it in a freezer full of oranges and then removing two of them, he said, "I've got what you call issues...and the chicks think that is sexy." It only gets better from there. Essentially the movie is about a black college student from Athens, GA (yes, there is a brilliantly used "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M. in the movie) who isn't exactly a bad guy but he realizes he could be a lot better person, and so he tries along with the help of a new lady friend named Diva, who's favorite movie is Space Jam. It's heartfelt without being too sappy and it's funny without being all that crude. Not bad.

2. Thin - Okay, initially I was totally against this movie, in the sense that I didn't think I'd understand or appreciate the depth and severity of the issue. I'm one of about six girls in the world who has never seriously considered my weight to be an issue. I sometimes joke about putting on weight or my lovehandles but I've never really thought about binging or purging. In fact, the only time I do either is when I drink a lot. Anyway, Thin is a documentary about girls and women with eating disorders. Apparently, somewhere in FLA, there's a clinic specifically for this issue. Not really understanding all the hoopla about denying oneself of food or eating too much and then purging oneself of it, I didn't think I'd like the movie. But here's to the credit of the director, Lauren Greenfield: she goes to the clinic and instead of getting bogged down in the doctors' technical terms or trying learn about the 30 or so women there, she focuses on four women. The four women, even better, are all at different stages of being in there, and they're all there with different problems and different reasons for having eating disorders. There's Polly who's doing the best of the four, but who's a little sassy for her own good. There's Alysa who wants to get better for her two children. There's Brittney who's 15 and who's mother also has an eating problem. There's Sherry who's a depressive who likes to be able to deny herself food so that she can be in control of something. It's sad to watch them cry over going from 87 pounds to 90 pounds. Seriously. I guess until I saw this movie I never understood that so many women do this or how they do it, but now I do. Cindy, my co-worker, did bring up one good point, which is they didn't have anybody who had an eating disorder due to a sport where they need to keep off the pounds. Sherry, who was at the screening we saw, brought up a better point (sorry, Cindy), she said she was initially skeptical of being involved in the project because documentaries and afternoon specials she'd seen on eating disorders always gave her hints on how to further her disorder, as well as showed her girls that she could be envious of how skinny they were, this movie doesn't glamorize it at all and you certainly see how bad it can get, while at the same time, because the women are recovering, there aren't many tricks of the trade that one can learn.

Those both were on Saturday. On Saturday, we heard a truly obnoxious New Jersey-ite talking about a movie we were going to see Sunday. He said it was funny. Because he was pretentious, we were a little less confident that it would be good. When we learned that it was a Danish movie with subtitles we were even less assured. By the way, going in, we knew we were going to watch a movie about a neo-Nazi who lives in a country church. Imagine our surprise that it was amazing.

3. Adam's Apples - This movie is the darkest comedy I've probably ever seen, and I love black comedies. Basically, this neo-Nazi, Adam, gets out of prison and is dropped off at a country church, which I guess serves as some sort of halfway house for prisoners. Right off the bat, you get the impression that something isn't quite right with the pastor of the church. He'll say stuff like, "I could say that what you just said to me is very rude, but this is not the time or the place." And he's not being passive agressive, he just wants to talk about something else at the time. Perhaps the most blatantly funny part is when the pastor goes into Adam's room and sees a picture of Hitler and says, "Is that your father? He's a handsome man." And Adam tells him it's Hitler, and the pastor says, "No, Hitler was the one with the beard." Anyway, as part of his recovery or whatever, the pastor said that he has to accomplish only one goal and it could be whatever he wanted, so just to be a dick, he says he'll bake a cake, to which the priest said, how about you bake an apple pie using the apples from our apple tree? Thinking that he has the easiest task in the world, he sets about learning the others who stay in the church. Through them, he learns of all the horrible things the pastor has suffered through. Instead of feeling bad about it, Adam makes it his mission to prove that the devil isn't testing the pastor with all of the shit that has been thrust upon him, but rather that God himself hates the pastor. At the same time, the apples are eaten by crows, and once they solve that problem, worms eat most of the apples, and finally lightening strikes down the tree. It's a good story about faith if you can suffer through gunfire, neo-Nazis, robberies, drinking while pregnant, former tennis players who take to drinking and a life of crime when a ball is mistakenly called out, and a Pakistani who often says, "For the sake of fuck." It's absolutely hilarious and you can bet I'll rent it from Netflix to share with anyone who cares.

4. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints - The more I think about this movie, the more heartbreaking it is, the more I like it and the more I'll stick to my guns about not really liking the editing or perhaps the directing (I'm not really good about distinguishing the two). Anyway, the movie is based on a book that is based on this guy's real life. The movie opens up with Robert Downey Jr. as the author of said book at like a book reading. He opens by saying something to the effect of by the end of this story two kids will have died and that's not giving away anything. Basically, he was saying the place he grew up in the mid-80s (in Astoria, NY, apparently a heavily Italian bad neighborhood near NYC) that two teenagers dying is neither surprising nor anything to be all that upset about. It then flashes to him as a teenager (my favorite piece of near-jailbait Shia LaBeouf) who says, "My name is Dito Montiel and I'm going to leave everyone in this film." Kind of like Garden State, the Dito kid runs away from the east coast to go to the west coast where things have to be better; he finally comes home and has to deal with all the people who never left when one of his parents is one his death bed. The story is told in flashbacks, but sometimes the way it's cut super duper drove me nuts. Nate explained the reason behind my least favorite one and it totally made sense but it doesn't stop it from being annoying. I just wish he could have gotten his point across in another way, but barring that I'll accept Nate's reasoning for it. Anyway, there's nothing particularly noteworthy about the story except for how real it is, that these kids do seem like real people, and essentially there are a lot of people who whether they wanted to or not helped Dito get out of it, even if they couldn't. That's why Nate said the title is what it it is, even if the people who helped him aren't really saints, they are people who saved his life by helping him get away from a bad situation. It's horribly sad, and maybe a little melodramatic but perhaps rightfully so. This was the one I wanted to see.

Anyway, how's that for a post? Long-winded, yes. Thought-provoking, probably not. Anyway, if you want to discuss the movies more, I'm happy to talk more about them. More on the rest of Utah later.