What I've Been Watching on DVD

I haven't been to the movies much recently (though I'm dying to and willing to go anytime), so I've decided to write up my thoughts on some of the DVD's I've seen over the recent weeks. Here they are:

*Into the Wild. I’ve never read the book it’s based on (though it is on my to-read list), but if it’s half as gripping as the movie then I know I’ll love it. This tells the story of Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, a recent college graduate with a privileged background who decides to give up everything, including contact with his family, to live a life of solitude in…well, the wild. He travels across the United States by hitchhiking and taking the occasional odd job, trying to reach his desired destination—the Alaskan wilderness. I don’t know if the ending is a secret to anyone anymore—it wasn’t to me—but even though I knew it was coming, I was still hoping hoping hoping until the very end that what I knew was going to happen wouldn’t happen. It’s certainly nothing I would ever be tempted to do, but I was rooting for McCandless to do whatever it was he set out to accomplish, and also to then return home to his exceedingly distraught family and to a safer life. The slow pace, the soundtrack (provided by none other than Eddie Vedder), McCandless’s experiences and the relationships he forges with people he meets on his journey, and especially the ending all contribute to the intensity of this movie—it haunted me (for lack of a better word) for days after watching it. Highly recommended. For those of you who have read the book, a few things were changed or exaggerated in the translation to film (according to Wikipedia), but I think that this is one of those rare instances where you should divorce the book from the movie and just look at it on its own—it’s really good.

*I’m Not There. This movie is a strange, sort-of-biopic about Bob Dylan. Strange in that six actors portray characters that are supposed to represent different stages of his life, but not one of them is named Bob Dylan. The timeline isn’t linear; it jumps from time to time, from persona to persona, and it can be kind of hard to stay focused through the whole thing—I personally let my attention stray elsewhere during the scenes featuring Ben Whishaw and Richard Gere. Cate Blanchett—who plays Jude Quinn, a representation of Dylan right after he went electric and started losing fans who felt he had sold out—definitely steals the movie. She’s incredible in anything, but any actress who can convincingly play a man, let alone one as iconic as Dylan, and pull it off as well as she did deserves the title of “Best Actress of Our Time.” Damn the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for giving the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Tilda Swinton for a (in my opinion) run-of-the-mill suspense thriller like Michael Clayton. This one is also recommended, but not as highly as Into the Wild.

*Lars and the Real Girl. Reviews for this movie were mixed when it first came out—I had heard not-so-good things about the film itself but raves for Ryan Gosling’s performance. I generally agree with critics on this one. He did a good job playing sad-sack Lars who orders a Real Doll from the internet and tells everyone that she’s his girlfriend. A quirky premise with a certain amount of promise, but something of the writer’s/director’s intentions didn’t quite make it through. I don’t believe that everyone in this small town would go along supporting Lars’s delusion and treating Bianca (the doll) like a real person. This inability to suspend disbelief makes it impossible to really enjoy the movie since it’s pretty much the whole point. I wouldn’t say not to see if you’ve really been wanting to for a while, but if you’re on the fence, allow me to push you over to the ‘no’ side.

*The Darjeeling Limited. This movie also received mixed reviews, but I absolutely adore it. I’ve never seen a Wes Anderson movie, but if this is what they’re like, then I will be Netflixing them all. It was hilarious in a quiet, unassuming way, and unexpectedly sweet and touching. Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Scwartzman star as equally screwed-up brothers who haven’t spoken in years and who are taking a trip through India on the title train to visit their mother at a convent. A series of misadventures ensues which causes them to rehash all their old problems and to subsequently become closer than ever. I went into this movie thinking that I wouldn’t like it and was pleasantly surprised; however, the most surprising thing was how much I loved Jason Schwartzman after watching it—he’s probably made it into my top five, in spite of the ill-conceived mustache (redundant, I know, since when is a mustache ever a good idea?) he has for most of the film.

*La Vie en Rose. An amazing biopic of Edith Piaf, one of the most famous (if not the most famous) French singers of all time. It chronicles her sad, crazy life, jumping back and forth between her earlier years to her dying days on the French Riviera. Piaf was a major diva and party girl (read: drinker and drug user) and those parts of her personality/life serve as the focus of most of this film. Actually, her tragic childhood gets pretty extensive treatment in the first half of the movie. Marion Cotillard does a great job playing her; she and the team of make-up artists more than deserved the Oscars they won for their work. Recommended for anyone who recognizes the name Edith Piaf, those who don’t mind subtitles, and those whose eyes can withstand reading subtitles for almost two and a half hours.