He's Just Not That Into You (2009) - by Faro

Why isn’t love an equation that adds up? Why does loving someone seem to guarantee that they won’t love you back? Why can’t those that love us be interesting enough or fuckable enough for us to love them back? When I love him/her, why doesn’t he/she love me?

These are the questions that are asked by the poor souls that populate those bars with darkly lit booths and lots of cheap whiskey, or that fill those French café’s with stiff backed chairs and exotic black teas. Or, if they are really into self-torture, they hang out in brightly lit bars with stiff backed chairs and drink nothing but Hot Toddies.

One can hear the sweetly straining sounds of melancholy music in the background of these questions, begging for sympathy and understanding, and one can almost pity these people… almost.

But then one remembers one distinct and fundamental truth, as it is communicated to us by Hollywood… when you hear people asking these forlorn questions about love and loss, there is apparently only one response:

“He’s just not that into you.”

This answer, for some reason (or lack of reason), is completely devoid of gender variability… apparently love has nothing to do with what women are thinking, it is merely a matter of whether or not men are, or are not, into women.

This, especially for pimply-faced 17 year old boys everywhere, might be difficult to accept… but apparently it is true. One wonders what a worried single lesbian might have to say about this gender-biased terminology… but they all live in Brooklyn, and won’t be going to see this movie anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

So, because they said it, it must be true… “He is just not that into you.”

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) - by Joan de Newyark

It starts with a daughter in a hospital room watching the wind, a young death, and a blind father missing his son. The blind father builds a clock that is his desire to allow his son and all fallen soldiers to stand again, to live the lives they never got to live, to reverse time.  The clock goes up and Benjamin button is born on the day WWI ends. He is terribly ugly and wrinkled and how the hell is that Brad Pitt?!

The cinematography is breathtaking, it pulses like a dream, it flickers like an old film, it is illuminated like slides of portraits by Loretta Lux and Jeff Wall, the magical realism is electric, its believable, its lovable, its the Curious Case of Benjamin Button based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I cried, I wanted to meet someone in the middle, fall in love, I missed my mom (and she was in the theatre with me), I remembered friends that have died and the things I have learned from people I didn't even know. And you will too.  You will understand when he says he hears the house breathe- the feeling in the middle of night when everyone you love is safely in bed and you leave to show a friend the river at dawn.  When he returns home after years of being away and everything is the same you feel a small pain.  The house smells the same, looks the same, the spoons are still in the same place- the only thing that keeps changing every time you come back is you.  Its moments like this why I loved this film.  And if you can read minds then I am totally that annoying girl leaving the theatre in the end thinking if I were to make a movie it would be similar to this.

The film is almost 3 hours- it does feel like Forrest Gump in a way that follows the course of a whole life and all of the stories of Benjamin's travels. The supporting characters come and go through a lifetime.  One of my favorite supporting characters is an old man that lives in the nursing home Benjamin grows up in- the man reminds Benjamin every time he sees him that he has been struck by lighting 7 times- every time he was just minding his business and was struck by lightning.  This goes on for years- the man grows older and Benjamin grows younger. "Some people are get struck by lightening, some people are artists, some are mothers, some dance, some people know buttons..."

Yes, the narrative is being told through the all too typical daughter reading a journal on the side of her mom's death bed (the daughter in the beginning watching the wind).  You cant see wind- is this symbolic?  And did I mention there is a hurricane approaching? No one knows to stay or go- if the hurricane will hit land or avoid the hospital all together. No one knows to stay or go- to die or stay, to love or leave, to grow old or grow young, to go backwards or forwards or even if they are different.  In the end this is hurricane Katrina- the basements flood, the daughter runs out of the hospital room to see what is happening and so does the dying mother, gasp- die?

The dying mother was once beautiful.  Benjamin lays on a mattress on the floor of their first house with the love of his life- he fell in love with her at first sight when he was 10 but looked 80.  She has shocking red hair and blue eyes. They look at themselves in the mirror they are in their 40's- they have met in the middle and finally appear to be the same age.  They are happy- the time lapse of them fucking and painting the walls makes me happy.  Nothing lasts forever- except some things.  You watch Benjamin fall in love, hold love and lose love. It is sad and I hate it as much as I hate real life love- I love it.  The costume director should get a gold medal because Cate Blanchett's clothes are everything you would want the love of your life to wear. 

And of course in the peak of his hotness they have to put Benjamin on a motorcycle, yes ladies we are suckers not just for a Brad Pitt digitized to look the way he did 10 years ago but also for motorcycles and movie producers know that.  Benjamin has written his love postcards from every place he has ever been as he travels on a tug boat and later as he feels more like an outsider as he grows younger physically.  He misses his family, his daughter and wants to be able to be there to teach her all the things anyone would cry over when thinking about a dad that maybe wasn't there or was disappointing in any way. i think the entire theatre was crying. He has to go, but couldn't he kiss her goodbye?

The end is the kicker- or was it the beginning?  Did your heart break when she walked into your life or walked away? Are we to remember anyone?  Is anyone meant to protect us, to hold us, to teach us, to befriend us?  What remains through time?  Everyone ends up in diapers.  Go see this movie now.  I will go with you even if we have never met. Yet.

xoxo,

Joan de Newyark

Let the Right One In (2008) - by Faro

Some little girls know what they are doing, and some little films are equally aware…

Shes got everything she needs,

Shes an artist, she dont look back.

This film offers us a glimpse of hope amidst the darkness of our daily isolation; it shows us a  tiny candle flame of a relationship, shrouded in long dark nights, snowdrifts, and silences. The light may be small and uncertain, but in its fragile warmth we can find a bit of hope by watching the blossoming trust between the strangest of companions… a 12 year old boy who is living with his divorced mother and a 12 year old vampire girl who is living with a murdering old man. The love that these two children form together seems so honest and open and brutally beautiful.

She can take the dark out of the nighttime

And paint the daytime black.

But as the bonds of love and understanding are formed between two pale children amongst the falling snow, we cannot help but wonder at the weathered and jealous man who stands behind the little girl. What does he represent? Why does he kill for her? Why does she not hunt for herself? What is his story… or rather, what is their story?

You will start out standing

Proud to steal her anything she sees.

And when this old man is caught, he burns his face with acid. Then we know that this old man loves his little vampire, and that he kills only for her, to feed her, and we know that he is filled with shame for his actions. He doesn’t want to be recognized for what he has become. 

But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole

Down upon your knees. 

But he is not done serving her, not yet. When she comes to his hospital, he offers her his final blood to feed her one last time. And she does not refuse this last gift, and in truth it is also a gift to him… a final release from bondage. 

She never stumbles,

Shes got no place to fall.

She sacrifices her servant, and she is alone. She must hunt for herself, and her diminutive size clearly causes her problems. A predator must have either strength or poison on their side, and she does not seems to have the size for strength. The film shows us her fragility now. And we learn more about the shattered isolation that the little boy is living. She botches an attempt to feed. He is unable to communicate with his father or his mother. She’s hesitant to tell the little boy her true nature. He is constantly tortured by sadistic schoolyard bullies. The little boy and the little girl reach out to each other, and make missteps and misunderstandings, but always a little bit of progress. He accepts her for what she is and proves his love for her by this acceptance, and she goes against the vampire code and nearly kills herself coming into his home without his spoken request, proving her love for him. Let the right one in. He lets her in…  and so we learn that as a predator, she uses poison instead of strength.

Shes nobodys child,

The law cant touch her at all.

And at a moment of absolute crisis, when it seems all is lost, she comes to save her friend, her lover. She kills in spectacular fashion, and one wonders if perhaps she has more strength than she lets on. They flee the dreary and bitterly cold Scandinavian suburban town on a train, and in the last moments of the film they are together escaping on a train… and the sunshine flows in the window, and the color palate of the shot is warm and inviting for the first time the whole film. They are together, they are not alone.

Shes a hypnotist collector,

You are a walking antique. 

We see that the real vampirism is not that she feeds off blood, but rather that she uses love to ensnare a life. To bring the life of a young boy into her service, into a devotion to her that will warp the very ethical fabric of that boy’s life, deciding for him what he will become before he even knows what else he could be... She offers total connection in a world of isolation,  and as payment she takes his soul.

…hope she’s worth it…

 

Let the Right One Slip In – by Morrissey 

Ah ... let the right one slip in / Slip in / Slip in / And when at last it does / I'd say you were within your rights to bite / The right one and say, "what kept you so long ?" / "What kept you so long ?" / Oh ...