National Jenny Spends All Her Time at the Movies Week

In the past seven days, I have seen 4 movies in the theater, one movie twice and two movies in a row in one day, so that's 5 movies, 2 theaters and 4 trips to a theater. Here is the log (sidenote: I just saw a book called Who Let The Blogs Out? here at the library. now i have that song in my head, but then it reminds me of Todd Barry on Flight of the Concords. Todd Barry is really funny.).

The first movie I saw was The Social Network. It's written by the West Wing guy and directed by the Fight Club guy. Imagine Harvard Square looking all Fight Club-y. It's great. The birth of Facebook is all wet, gross, angry, and girl-hating. The best part of the beginning is when a BU girl breaks up with Mr. Facebook and he had been insulting BU a bunch. GO BU, right? Truth be told, I liked it a lot better the second time. But I'll get to that. You might not see this one at the movies but I recommend it for the old queue.

The second movie I saw was Let Me In. I'm pretty devoted to the Swedish movie, I even read the book and bought the soundtrack. At first I was offended that someone would remake it, but then I remembered how many more people would see the story and that was encouraging. The little vampire is played by HitGirl from Kick Ass. She's good. The little boy is really good. Some stuff is different, like this one is more special-fx-y, glowing eyes and whatnot, more fake. The pool scene is great. It's not as good as the original, but it's better than most movies. Plus I love how the kids are neighbors and communicated with each other through the walls with Morse code, and Richard Jenkins is always so great and sadfaced, and I love how the ancient vampire loves puzzles and is always saying "we can't be friends" but ends up with the little boy anyway. Also, bullying is so intense. I'm pretty sure I was a bully before 6th grade when I got weird, and then high school I was the opposite of a bully, so I get mixed feelings. When the boy strikes back against his bully it's pretty amazing, even though you know the bully is bullied himself by his older brother. And that the vampire encourages him to strike back: good influence or bad influence?

The third movie I saw was called Phillip Seymour Hoffman Never Shuts His Mouth All the Way. Just kidding. It's called Jack Goes Boating. Based on a play, and I think PSH was in the play, also he directed the movie. Amy Ryan is pretty adorable in general. PSH is okay, he used to be a fave but that has waned. Anyway, he's a dopey car service driver in NYC and his best driver friend who tells him he loves him all the time decides to set up a double date with Dopey and the BDF and the BDF's wife and the BDF's wife's co-worker, Amy Ryan. The girls work for some kind of funeral thing but it's a lot of sales and it's unclear. The BDF's wife has lots of affairs and apparently the BDF is a loser. Dopey loves reggae. Amy gets attacked on the subway and Dopey brings her a reggae tape and asks her out to dinner but when he makes dinner for her and the couple, they smoke a hookah and get high and then he forgets about dinner which burns and then he hides and cries in the bathroom until Amy plays the reggae song and everybody sings. The best part is how the BDF teaches Dopey how to swim in a pool because a pool was a big part of my life in NYC so I just sat back and enjoyed the nostalgia. Another good thing was the Grizzly Bear/Fleet Foxes soundtrack but seriously, this movie was bad.

The fourth movie I saw is the first movie, the same. I watched Jack Goes Boating and it wasn't enough and I couldn't fathom sitting through The Town or Wall Street so back into The Social Network I went. It was much better the second time. I was less shocked by the misogyny and more entertained by the characters, especially the giant Aryan twins, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, and the kid from Zombie Land, the more substantial looking Michael Cera. I love the ex girlfriend even though she's barely a character and Karen from the Office is in it and her character is also barely in it but manages to be really annoying. The thing is, it's all about lawsuits and then college, so that's interesting and also how shockingly cutthroat this kid the mother of facebook is. I'm always happy to see someplace that I've spent a lot of time in on the big screen. Also way overscored. Maybe Trent Reznor is bottled up, I dunno. Although, the second time I was totally into the ominous sounds every time something was about to happen, was happening or had just happened.

The fifth movie I saw was Never Let Me Go. You said you read some of the book so maybe you have some idea of the tone. It was all pretty charming and eerie. Love the big old boarding school, love the incredible wardrobes of toggle coats and wellies and wool hats and nice sweaters, love the tearjerking of it all. The love triangle was hard to take because you just know that the one girl goes after the boy to upset the other girl but what I didn't like was how in the end she was all, i'm sorry i kept you two apart. it's like this boy had no say in it. so that was annoying. I also can't capitalize consistently. Anyway, it was sad sad sad and foggy British browns and greens and lots of seaside windy scenes. I recommend this movie, it's got a lot of good things going for it, like story, acting and style. I didn't cry even though that was my main motive for seeing it. Everybody seemed to be crying. I was too wrapped up in the main character's story, and she seemed more stoic than sad. Stoic could be something to aspire too, at least for a minute or two, but then again I don't think it works that way.