Saved!
Topic: Movie Reviews
I loved this movie! It was bitingly funny but at the same time, it also makes you care about the characters. Well, actually let me slow down and give you a little overview of the plot.

Mary goes to a Christian school and seems to be the perfect Christian girl. She hangs out with her friends, a group of girls who call themselves the Christian Jewels. Everything is great until Mary finds out that she's pregnant (I won't spoil the hilarious circumstances that got her that way). Her world gets totally turned upside down, and most of the movie explores this process in a sometimes touching, often funny way.

Mary's story is not the only one being told though. The side characters are very well-developed. Hillary Fae is the leader of the Christian Jewels, who is perfectly happy with her Christianity as long as she's in total control. We see Mary's mother as well, whose Christianity is closely entwined with her relationship with the pastor. Finally, there are some great plotlines involving Hillary's crippled brother and the Jewish girl outcast from school. All of them touch Mary's life, but you really understand what is motivating them.

I highly recommend this movie. It's really funny, especially if you've ever known Christians like the ones portrayed. Ever seen the bumper sticker that says "God, protect me from your followers"? This movie is that bumper sticker spun out into a story. At the same time, it's not a total rejection of Christianity. It's more about the characters trying to bring it back to its root, which is love.

Memento & Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Topic: Movie Reviews
I got a minor cold so I was out of work on Friday. It gave me the opportunity to watch not one, but two movies. The good news is that they were both excellent - well worth the money I'm paying Netflix.

Memento
Memento is a mindblowing movie on many levels. The basic plot is that Leonard Shelby has a brain disorder where he has not been able to create new memories since he received a severe injury to his head. He can remember everything up until he received the head trauma in an attack by intruders, but since then, he doesn't remember anything for more than about 10 minutes. Despite this handicap, he's on a mission to avenge his wife's death at the hands of the attackers who took away his memory.

Probably the most interesting feature of the film is that it actually runs backwards in time. What this does is to make us see the world the way that Leonard does. All he has is Polaroids, notes and tattoos to tell him what has happened before. For most of the movie, that's all the viewer has to go on as well. As the movie progresses, we see more of what has happened, but does it actually give you more information? The ending is a total mindfuck (not in a bad way), but I don't want to say anymore than that so I don't spoil the story.

This movie will definitely make you question the nature of facts and memory. It's a very well-crafted movie and a really good mind trip. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a good, original story and puzzles. If you like your endings to tie up everything in a neat little package, then avoid this movie. For everyone else, you'll love it.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I guess I had an unintentional theme for my movie-watching. Eternal Sunshine is also about the nature of the mind and memory, but it explores the topic with more quirky humor and less thrills than Memento. This tale is about the couple Joel and Clementine. After a rough breakup, Clemetine decides to have all her memories of Joel erased from her mind. To get back at her, Joel decides that he will have her erased too.

Most of the movie consists of montages from Joel's memories of his relationship with Clementine. THe director makes being inside someone else's head a very interesting experience. As the erasure progresses, Joel finds that he doesn't really want to go through the procedure so he tries to squirrel away some of his memories of Clem. This, of course, leads to some funny incidents. I know it doesn't sound like much, but the fact that much of the movie takes place inside Joel's head is brilliant, and the director does a good job of portraying the general weirdness/fuzziness of human memory. It reminds me a lot of Being John Malkovich. It's very well-done and touches a lot of emotions. After all, we've all been through relationships and have probably had breakups like theirs too.

There are a lot of questions/themes that this movie raises, but I think the big one is:
What do you really lose when you choose to erase memories?
This movie explores that question with lots of heart and humor and some just plain weird characters. Definitely go watch it. You won't want to have the memory erased. *insert groans here*

But I'm A Cheerleader
Topic: Movie Reviews
It was grossly rainy all last night so I got a chance to sit down and watch a movie finally. It was But I'm A Cheerleader, which is a somewhat surreal film. The plot follows a teenager named Megan, who is also a cheerleader as the title says. Her parents become concerned that she might be a lesbian so they send her to a recovery program called "True Directions." In the program, girls wear pink and boys wear blue, and they learn "appropriate" gender roles. The girls learn cooking, cleaning and childcare, while the boys learn car repair and football. This vignettes of program activities are funny but also disturbing in a subtle way. This is not over the top humor here. Instead, it's bizarrely amusing.

Despite, the surreal filming of True Directions, you do get a feel for the characters and their motivations. You can feel the very real yearning of the characters to fit in with "normal" (hetero) society. When Megan falls for another girl in the program, you share every emotion in their budding romance. As a bonus, the lesbian love scenes are very tastefully done. You can tell how much the characters care about each other.

I don't want to spoil the plot, but I will say that the ending is kind of cheesy. However, it has lots more depth than, for example, Kissing Jessica Stein. In this film, lesbianism is more than just an experiment. It's something for which people take real risks, and their struggles ring very true.

Overall, this was a good movie, especially if you're at all interested in gay/lesbian themes. There is some stereotyping of gay men, but for the most part, this film is sensitively and subtly done. The cheesy ending subtracted some points, but I still recommend it.