salute your shorts

So... I haven't posted in quite a while, mostly because I haven't seen very many movies lately, but also because I'm lazy. But that's all going to change. Well, not the lazy part, but the not seeing movies part. The university's indie/art theater is about to reopen, and I plan to become a fixture there. I'm also about 98% sure I'm finally going to take the plunge and get Netflix, though I've been saying that for a good two years now.

Anyway, I've been meaning to write about the various rentals I've seen over the past few months, but I think I'll just condense them all into overviews.

The Edukators
I think this was my favorite thing I've rented lately. It's a German film starring Daniel Bruhl (Goodbye, Lenin!) about a group of activists that call themselves the Edukators who break into rich people's homes, rearrange their furniture, and leave messages like "Your days of prosperity are numbered." Things go terribly awry when they decide to break into the house of a man one of the Edukators is in debt to and he comes home. They end up kidnapping him and bringing him to a remote cabin in the woods. The rest of the movie is a conversation between the four about being rich and affecting change. It raised a lot of interesting issues, and the ending was left open to interpretation (though you can view the German version of the ending on line, which spells things out a lot more clearly).

Thank You for Smoking
Aaron Eckhart is Nick Naylor, a loveable spin doctor for big tobacco. That's right, we're rooting for tobacco! Ok, not really, but the satire is a welcome break from the standard "big tobacco is evil!" message. We get it. We've all seen the Truth ads. I probably would have enjoyed this movie more had that freaky kid from Running Scared not been in it. Seriously, that kid is creepy. Also, Running Scared is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Bad. Soooo bad.

Stevie
This is a documentary about the filmmaker reconnecting with a boy (Stevie) he was Big Brother to during college. Some time after he reconnects with Stevie, he is arrested for the sexual assault of a young girl. The filmmaker is the same one who did Hoop Dreams, which, while I haven't seen it, seems to be a pretty reputable documentary, which makes Stevie all the more disappointing. Besides the film being fairly boring, the filmmaker is also completely self-serving. He reconnects with Stevie, then promptly loses contact with him again (even after promising to be more involved in his life) until he gets word of Stevie's legal troubles. Hmm, this might make for a more interesting documentary... The rest of the film is him being superficially involved in Stevie's life until he ultimately ends up in jail. I'm surprised I made it to the end of this film, seeing as how mad I was at the filmmaker. I won't be watching anything else of his any time soon.

Little Miss Sunshine
Here's how it usually goes: the more excited I am about a movie, the more I'm disappointed in it. I definitely wasn't disappointed in LMS, though I'm slightly baffled by the Oscar buzz (especially considering how Oscar hates funny). I was most impressed by Steve Carell. He does understated very well, and it was a welcome break from wanting to reach through the screen and strangle him when he's Michael Scott. I wasn't as impressed with the whole young girl gets saucy and shocks the uptight audience at the beauty pageant thing, but overall it was a decent movie. I'm not expecting a Crash-style upset come Oscar night.