sarah recommends…

partly in response to electric firefly’s recommendations in honor of Upcoming Unnamed Romantic Holiday and partly because I’ve been in a movie renting phase again, I’d like to offer up a recommendation of my own.

In the Land of Women. I sort of dislike posting trailers because too often they spoil the surprises and good stuff– I love it when I go in to a movie knowing and expecting virtually nothing and am swept up into the reality it creates– I also think that trailers are a very specific medium separate from and wholly different from the feature-length films they supposedly represent, such is the power of editing and pacing. this movie is not what the trailers would seem to sell it as, a romantic comedy– it’s a lot more thoughtful and quirky and therefore, I think, lovable than that. the strengths are really good writing, superb pacing, and beautiful performances, even if you may or may not have preconceptions about meg ryan from her previous roles. and, really, what’s not to love about adam brody?

I wish I could recommend more than this, but really a lot of what I’ve watched recently has just sort of slid right off the plate of my consciousness. I liked Fracture, even though it’s pretty formulaic, because how could a movie with ryan gosling and anthony hopkins be anything but watchable? but frankly it’s thin. the rube goldberg devices are nifty, though. I tried to watch 300 and had to shut it off about ten minutes in, which I virtually never do– somehow the same types of artifices and over-the-top-ness that I adore in Sin City, here just felt way off the mark and immensely irritating to me. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix was… I won’t even say enjoyable because poor Harry is just being set up to grapple with one impossible situation and set of condemnation and misunderstandings after another, and it just kind of feels like a gulag to me. if you want fantasy The Golden Compass is far more multifaceted and compelling, for my money.