It's Kind of a Funny Story

I cried. Kind of a lot, actually, even though it’s sort of a comedy, and it’s all right. Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, the co-directors and writers of this movie, really know their business. Though this is an extremely different movie in almost every way from their masterpiece, Half Nelson, it affected me deeply. Half Nelson, with Ryan Gosling’s outrageously major performance, wins over this one in terms of heft, but let me tell you that Zack Galifianakis is a delightful, depressing surprise in It’s Kind of a Funny Story. Bobby, Galifianakis’ character, is not technically the lead role here, but he’s the heart of it.
Set in a mental hospital in Brooklyn, the film is narrated by Craig (Keir Gilchrist, awkward and kind of wonderful), a 16-year-old who has checked himself in for what he thought would be a couple of hours, but turns out to be five days, because of state law. Whoops. He’ll explain his reasoning to you for that and other things, and he’ll do it in style, helped along by the stop-motion flashback editing, also done by Boden, a triple threat.
Suffice it to say, this is a new kind of coming-of-age tale, and one of the more realistic ones put to film. There is, of course, a love interest, two actually. Zoe Kravitz is the initial one, who’s unfortunately dating Craig’s best friend. Emma Roberts is the quirky second one who Craig meets in the hospital, and is prone to playing games, writing notes, and wearing weird outfits. But she’s a real person. No mind games, no pretending to be other than what she is, which I really appreciated, from her and all the other characters, in fact. There were times when I felt like I’d been punched in the gut by the reality of various situations shown here.
But Bobby is the soul of the movie. Who knew Galifianakis had this in him? We know him as the plump, bumbling fool from The Hangover, etc, but here he reduced me to tears more than once, playing the clown of the ward, but with a not-very-well-hidden sad side. His eyes speak volumes. Viola Davis, as the head psychiatrist, is, in my opinion, the best-written shrink I’ve seen in a while. And yes, I saw Good Will Hunting, but I wouldn’t want Robin Williams digging into my soul, ever. Give me Viola and her honeyed voice and twinkling eyes any day.
In my experience, I’ve found that new environments change us forever, in ways we cannot stop from happening. Can five days of intense therapy and soul-searching cure what ails you? No. But it can push you forward.

The Deep End

The Deep End, based on the novel The Blank Wall, by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, is in the odd position of being well-cast, well-acted, well-directed, and kind of horribly written. Were it not so well-acted, in fact, it would turn almost immediately into a trite, soapy piece of trash. But Tilda Swinton’s in charge here, not the dialogue. She plays (please forgive me, but I cannot think of a better way to put this right now) a mama grizzly.
We meet Margaret Hall in a nightclub in mid-day, telling the owner, Darby (Josh Lucas, cute and creepy), to stay away from her son. The son in question (Jonathon Tucker, who should get better roles than he tends to, but this one’s good) has been spending some quality time with this club guy, when he should be concentrating on applying to colleges. So of course Darby comes to the house in the middle of the night. The house is next to a lake (Tahoe). Uh oh. But it’s not as simple as you think. Not nearly. Especially when a gorgeous blackmailer enters the picture (Goran Visnjic of ER fame). And especially when a mother makes assumptions about her family and goes to the ends of the earth to stop things from getting worse.
Questions are raised here: If you thought your child had killed someone, how far would you go to help them get away it? But what if you weren’t sure?
I wanted to love this movie. I’d been wanting to love it for 9 years. Somehow, this is when I got around to seeing it for the first time. I can’t say that I’m totally disappointed, since I’ll watch Tilda Swinton do just about anything, and she does not let me down here. But I wanted more.

Howl

James Franco is a genius. Say it with me. James Franco is a genius.
Have you read Howl? Do you know who Allen Ginsberg is? If the answer to either of those questions is “no,” get up, do research, watch footage, fall in love, and then watch this movie. James Franco is a genius. The extent to which he sinks into his “character,” the author of this gorgeous controversial poem, is shocking. I was shocked. I was moved to tears.
Most images of Ginsberg that people are familiar with right now are those from the 60s, post-Howl trial, during his long-bearded, wild-haired days. Ginsberg himself holding up cue cards in the Bob Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back, or David Cross’ vision of Ginsberg in I’m Not There, crazed on the back of a motorcycle, shouting. The Ginsberg of Howl, this sparkling biopic, is a young man, clean-shaven and soft, finding his place in the world, in writing, and in love.
Howl is split into four distinct pieces: an interview with Ginsberg; the obscenity trial against the book Howl and Other Poems, which pitted the publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, against the state; Ginsberg reading Howl aloud to an audience pre-publication; and an animated sequence with a voiceover of the poem. Each piece is a different color, a different mood, but they are blended together nearly seamlessly by the co-directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
Though Ginsberg tells us there is no Beat Generation, all the players are there, though almost none have any lines to speak. We see Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, both objects of Ginsberg’s affection, both of whom broke his heart. We meet Peter Orlovsky, the man who finally loved Ginsberg back and continued to love him for his whole life. We listen to Ginsberg speak about his mother, Naomi, lost to madness, and for whom he wrote the beautiful and heart-wrenching poem, Kaddish.
The major players in this film could not have been better-chosen. There are Jon Hamm and David Strathairn as the dueling lawyers, Bob Balaban as a put-upon judge, and numerous witnesses on both sides of the obscenity argument, including Treat Williams and Alessandro Nivola. But the real treat here is Franco, who never fails to impress, but who I had not seen in full glory before, I realize. His voice, cadence, and movements are Ginsberg’s, and they are glorious.

Winter's Bone

My heart was beating faster than usual when this movie let out. There was a tugging on it as well, which was there through most of the film. I wasn’t 100% certain that I wanted to see this, thought maybe I should wait until it was available on Netflix. Another quiet, slow-paced movie set in the cold mountains of the American South? Must I? But the girl who stars in it, Jennifer Lawrence, was getting the kind of reviews you don’t often see anymore, and a friend of mine told me that I’d “better see this movie if it’s still out in the city.” So I went, and blown was my mind.
Less is more, they say, and so, I imagine, did Debra Granik, the director. And Jennifer Lawrence listened. Her performance of the lead character, a girl who has never lied and never needs to, is so deeply soulful, with a mixture of mournfulness and hardness inside it. She plays Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old girl of the Ozarks, from a meth-cooking family. She becomes caretaker to her siblings and their mother, who has retreated into a near silent existence, unable to tend to her offspring. Ree’s father, a noted meth cooker in town, has gone missing the week before his court date, and Ree learns from a cop that he has put his family’s house up as his bond. Ree grocks the fact that her only choice is to find her father. And so the movie begins.
Winter’s Bone is cold, raw, and chewed up, as is John Hawkes, who plays Ree’s terrifying uncle Teardrop, the meth addict with a heart of lead. Ree’s questioning about her father’s whereabouts is a prickly topic, and there is violence in the film because of it. But there is not enough violence to warrant skipping the movie.
The cold and mist in Winter’s Bone will sink into you in the theater. It may be a quiet little movie, but it will roar at you for some time.

Let The Right One In

Someone has been killing the townspeople of Blackeberg, the tiny suburb of Stockholm that is the setting of this gem, draining them of blood. We know from the beginning who it is. This is not a murder mystery. This is a tale of two young (one only nominally) people finding their way around each other, forming a symbiotic relationship in the snowy reaches of Sweden.
We meet Oskar, a spindly and bullied 12-year-old, as he torments empty space the way his classmates have tormented him. You’ll recognize his first lines, and shudder appropriately, from Deliverance, though the tone they are uttered in could not be more different from the original.
The killer that the town is searching for, who is taking people’s friends and loved ones, is not a psychopath, nor a deranged vengeful person, but a 12-year-old girl. She is Eli, a vampire, new in town, who befriends Oskar and teaches him to protect himself. Oskar’s fascination with gore and death provides enough of a buffer that he is not phased when he realizes Eli’s secret. Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson, as Oskar and Eli, respectively, are brilliantly self-assured and precise in their acting. Nothing overdone, nothing superfluous. The same goes for the rest of the film, actually. There is no Hans Zimmer score booming away in the back of each scene, telling us how to feel and when to feel it. Instead, there is almost utter silence, save for the crunch of boots in the snow or a body thudding against a van. We feel what we feel when we feel it.
The age of original ideas in Western film being mostly dead, we will be “treated” to an American remake of this wonderful film later this year. I smell a thriller, unfortunately. Get to this one first.

**Since this posting, I have spoken to several people about the remake, and my mind has been changed. My brother, specifically, helped this occur, since he is prone to not liking things, but he has high hopes for the American version, except for the part where it's set in New Mexico, which I read somewhere. In any case, he convinced me that from the previews, it looks to be a possibly shot-for-shot remake, so I feel better about it. But I still think it's silly to remake something so soon after the original was released. Of course, we're also getting an American- and British-made version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, even though the original (Swedish again) was literally still in theaters a month ago.

The Kids Are All Right

Oof. Turns out I feel the same about Lisa Cholodenko's directorial work, chronologically, as I do about Chuck Palahniuk's novels: great, meh, awful. First we have High Art, which was great, and which gave us Ally Sheedy and Patricia Clarkson in mesmerizing roles. Then we got Lauren Canyon, which allowed us to gaze at Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale and Frances McDormand, but which was overall kind of a snooze. Now we have The Kids Are All Right, which could and should have been amazing. But it's not. It's actually sort of offensively not good, and left me with pangs of sadness for the cast, all of whom are way better than this.
Before we get into anything that matters, let's chat about Yaya De-freaking-Costa, who managed to get a role here, lucky skinny bitch, since ALL her scenes are with Mark Ruffalo, and in one of those scenes they are both naked. I remember this Yaya from her decidedly less refined days on America's Next Top Model, where all she did was complain about her skin, cry because a hat was not genuine kente cloth, and spit food onto the floor. So watching her try to emote on film was difficult for me.
Now let's talk about why I was upset. I went into the theater thinking that I was about to watch a quiet funny movie about a lesbian couple processing emotions and dealing with the entry of their sperm donor, with whom they have each had a child, into their lives. Not asking too much, is it??? Turns out, this is a movie where THINGS HAPPEN THAT THROW EVERYONE'S LIVES INTO CHAOS, AND SPEECHES ARE MADE AND LIVES IRREVOCABLY DAMAGED. Not what I signed on for. And, I wish, not something that this cast would have signed on for, either. Mark Ruffalo, who has been described by people (my mom) as "able to just look at a woman, and her clothes fall off," is done wrong here. The sperm bank industry is not done much of a favor, either. To go into detail about either of those statements would be to ruin a lot of the movie, and I don't want to do that.
I get that the adults in the movie are written to act like children on purpose, but the extent to which they all needed a time out in the corner chair was unbelievable. Annette Bening's Nic, a Type-A personality doctor/wino, gave me zero reason to like her or sympathize with her once during the entire movie. Well, she does give one pretty good speech, railing against things like composting and hemp milk, but that's it. Julianne Moore's Jules, a lost soul with a self-esteem problem, khaki shorts, hiking boots and an unplaceable accent, fares a little better. Ruffalo's Paul, who is the antagonist in no small way here, is 10 kinds of awesome, a guy I would certainly have a beer and sex with. The kids, played by Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson, are, as the title suggests, all right, and definitely more grown up than either of their moms, which, as you will see from Laser's (Hutcherson's) introduction, is not saying a whole lot...
All that said, though, I managed to see the movie and take in chips and a seltzer, all for under 10 buckaroos. Thanks, Brooklyn.

The Safety of Objects

This is an unsettling film. It's a multiple-character study of 4 families in the suburbs, all dealing with the fallout of a terrible accident. It is not a "look at how crazy those suburban-ites are" film. The pathos associated with suburban living are there, and the infidelities and teenage anxiety, but they have been stripped to their essence. The screenplay is harsh and unforgiving, at times baffling, but isn't life sometimes, and aren't people? Don't people go off the rails every now and then and act in inexplicable ways, creating chaos for miles? Yes, they do, and so they do here.
There are so many storylines happening all at once in this film, overlapping and interlocking, it would be impossible to list them all. Glenn Close is a family matriarch, chattering away to her comatose son (Joshua Jackson, a small-town rock star in flashbacks, and the film's anchor) while ignoring her daughter, who is very much in need of attention. Tomboy Kristin Stewart is Sam, caught in an unlucky situation with a grieving gardener. The genius Patricia Clarkson, Sam's mother, brings her signature spark to a frenzied role, and Dermot Mulroney shows his acting chops with a slow unraveling. Everyone is connected, everyone is affected, and nobody is really okay.

The Proposal

Before you say anything, no, I do NOT apologize for watching this movie. I am a snob about many things, but I love me some rom-com action, as long as there is no sign of Katherine Heigl, who is a ruiner of all things romantic. Sandra Bullock? Yup, I dig her. Ryan Reynolds? Hell to the yes, my friend, bring on the Canadian antics.
Ok, you all know the plot. Bitchy boss, loyal assistant, she's going to be deported, they fake an engagement. It was all in the previews, I haven't ruined anything for you.
Everything you think you know about this movie is true. There are witty one-liners, the grandma's a crackpot because she's played by Betty White, there are Strong Emotions and True Feelings Revealed. You have seen this movie before, by several other titles. But who cares???? It's fun, it's cute, you laugh (I did, they're funny people), you cry (yes, I have feelings), you wonder if you'll ever look that good in a knee-length skirt suit (probably not). The other thing you do is hit Pause at the moment the two leads bang into each other naked, and then you study that image very carefully. Upon careful inspection, you will come to the conclusion that they have two of the best asses in Hollywood, as well as the rest of their bodies (Sandra Bullock's thighs made me really angry), and then you will experience jealousy for a moment. And then you will hit Play again, and you will laugh and cry.
Listen, I know that every once in a while, all of us are up for a stupid romantic movie night, and how many times can we watch Bridget Jones??

Right at Your Door

This is truly one of the most terrifying movies I've seen in a while. I was not expecting much, just another "what if the terrorists..." bang bam boom types. Not so. Who the terrorists are here is unknown. The concern is the victims.
A young married couple, Brad and Lexi (Rory Cochrane and Mary McCormack) say goodbye in the morning as Lexi leaves for work. Shortly after, someone sets off multiple bombs in downtown Los Angeles. There is a possibility that the bombs are dirty. From this exposition comes a boatload of ethical, moral, and emotional questions, and those are the central themes of the film.
Could you choose between yourself and a loved one? Would you? What is the government's role in our safety in our own home? Would you help or cower?
Sheets of plastic and duct tape are all that separate the couple from each other through the movie. They are so close, but untouchable. As the film progresses over the course of a few days, as they wait for help for arrive, the set literally shrinks, as more and more of the house becomes blocked off. Lexi needs to drink more water. A wandering child needs to be cleaned off. Each instance shrinks the usable area of the house, as more and more plastic sheets go up, more transparent doors, more see-through blockades.
The script by Chris Gorak, who also directs, is riveting. A deep and heartbreaking anger runs through the film. How would you speak to the person you love most and let them know that you love them, when you cannot allow them to touch you, to breathe the air that you breathe?

Ravenous

Hillshire Farm loves this movie. Go Meat!
The IFC blurb of this film reads "Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle debate cannibalism in the 1847 Sierra Nevadas." UM, NOT REALLY. The previews for this film made it look like, and I believed actually advertised it as, a horror film, sort of a period slasher movie. NOT SO MUCH. It's a comedy, albeit an incredibly gory one, but it's entirely on purpose, and all the advertising was bunk. The reason it failed at the box office is because it was geared toward the wrong audience. They wanted teenagers who feast on violence to see this, when what they should have been doing was casing the joint for over-educated hipsters with a deep-seated sense of humor.
What we have here is a vampirically pale and slightly confused-looking Guy Pearce as a disgraced soldier, banished to California, where he encounters Robert Carlyle, the near-victim of a crazed cannibal. Or is he?????? There are chases through the forests (set to a Benny Hill-style fiddle tune), bellies ripped to bits with dull knives, stews cooked over a rolling fire, dead horses, a scene involving a bone that kicked my gag reflex into high gear, and David Arquette. But I laughed the whole way through. On my grandmother's movie rating system, this rates a "highly diversionary."
If you like dirt-covered dude movies, and are extremely okay with the sight of blood, and love to snicker at things that also make you go "blech," please watch this movie.

Splice

Oh, Canada!
A human, a kangaroo, a griffon, a velociraptor, a snake, and Flipper walk into an incubator...so begins the vexing tale of Splice. On the surface, it is the story of two rule-breaking and stupid scientists. Below the surface, it is simply a terrible movie, but a joyous experience all around. It must be watched with friends.
Clearly, my girl Sarah Polley needed rent money. She's way better than this mess. Adrien Brody is, as always, undeniably sexy even though his nose takes up most of the screen, and here he displays some seriously whacked sexual behavior. Ever seen a winged orgasm? Now you have.
Need a vague plot outline? The two idiot scientists go against their orders and splice human DNA with animal DNA. No one says which animals specifically, because it appears that they poured things in with their eyes closed. Better to surprise you with, my dear. The outcome is a big-eyed, high-jumping, 3-fingered, gilled, bald, aging machine with serious mommy issues and a penchant for almost dying. And she loves Scrabble.
The defining moment of this film for me was during a pivotal scene (pivotal in that it cemented my suspicion that this was a hilariously awful movie) when my friend announced very loudly, "This is making me feel uncomfortable." Since everyone else in the theater was busy laughing, they may not have heard her.
The pitch meeting for this movie can probably best be described in a very short monologue from the movie itself. First, the pitch is given. Then, after a shocked silence, the studio says, "You can't do that...you shouldn't do that." But of course, they did that.

Heaven

This quiet little movie defied any and all low expectations I had about it prior to hitting PLAY. My doubts were in place simply because of the blurb about it on IFC, which listed Giovanni Ribisi as playing an Italian cop who falls in love with Cate Blanchett. If you are like me in that you type-cast Ribisi as a bumbling idiot clown, you should watch this movie. And then remember that he was on that episode of the X-Files where he was electricity personified and he turned on jukeboxes and defibrillators with his mind. And he narrated The Virgin Suicides.
Heaven begins with a revenge scenario gone horribly awry, but the explosion is the loudest and most jarring part of the film. Silence is more conducive to portraying fear, loneliness, and regret, which are a few of the themes here. Blanchett plays an English woman living in Italy, looking for justice. She is effectively waging a one-woman war against drugs, claiming that the police have not heeded her many calls and letters about a man she says played a role in her husband's death. Blanchett is stupendous as always, but Tom Twyker, the director (Run Lola Run), does not allow the movie to be obsessed with her beauty. She is a character actor, and here she is allowed to be ugly, or as ugly as she can be, which is not very much at all...
All the usual plot devices from prison/cop movies are here: loss, revenge, love, and escape. The difference is that they have been turned on their heads. No car chases, no shootouts, no passionate sex scenes. But it is a better cop movie than most. At its core, it is a love story. Go hit PLAY.

Chapter 27

The end of this movie was the best part, not just because I no longer had to watch it, but it's where all the footage from the 1980 Central Park gatherings remembering John Lennon were, and they brought me to tears.
If you don't recognize this title, let me rephrase it for you: The Movie That Beautiful Jared Leto Put on 70 Pounds For. He plays Mark David Chapman, arguably the most infamous assassin of the last couple of centuries, with the possible exception of John Wilkes Booth. Unfortunately, instead of really giving us a look into the deteriorating mind of a killer, we listen to a lot of yammering voiceovers, mouth-breathing and bizarre speech patterns. The film’s title is a reference to JD Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, which was Chapman’s second obsession, with Lennon and the Beatles at large being the first. Because seeing him carry the book around during the movie and being told by him explicitly that it is his statement to the police and his Bible is not enough, we are treated to shots of waving rye fields throughout the film. Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer came down upon [our] head[s].
A pre-totally washed-up Lindsay Lohan appears in a thankless role as the fictional Jude (Hey!), a fellow Beatles mega-fan. It takes this poor sap two full days to realize that the man she's been chatting with is a crazy nutjob. If a slow-moving stranger ever came up to me and offered to buy me dinner, and he had the voice of a eunuch swimming in molasses, I'd be a mile away in .5 seconds, but I guess I'm a little less trusting than a lot of people.
It's too bad that this didn't work out as a movie. John Lennon deserved better.

People Will Talk

And how!! This is a film from 1951, when filmmakers were really starting to push the envelope with the Hays Code. Sex was largely still being implied by dance sequences and fade-outs, murders were bloodless, and anything outside of heterosexual same-race relations was illegal. Well, here we have an example of how flouting the rules leads to great art. Here we have premarital sex, unethical doctors, an unveiled suicide attempt, abortion references, and men raising other men's babies.
Best of all, we have Cary Grant in the lead role. I don't know much about Jeanne Crain, the woman in trouble, but Grant is on my list of those who can do no wrong.
If this film were made now, it wouldn't startle anyone. It would be tame. But a rule that I have about watching movies is that you must allow yourself to watch it as it was intended to be seen. Watching network TV now, where no one swears, but everyone gets shot, is absurd, and there's no way around it. But watching Code-era movies, especially the ones that stick their tongues out at Hays, I never cease to be amazed at what they got away with. True, no one swore in movies then, either, but think about it: we can watch Jack Bauer on 24 literally slice a man's abdomen open while he's still vaguely alive to fish a SIM card out of his stomach, but he cannot say "Fuck." In 1951, a kiss showing anything more than two faces mashed together for a second was taboo. Isn't a little mystery nice every once in a while?

Kick-Ass

Oh my god, run run run run run to this movie. Sprint, people, go!!!!!!
So, the hype surrounding this movie was (is, really) centered around one word in one scene. There is a young girl in this movie, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, who was the sassy little sister in (500) Days of Summer. In one scene, she enters a room and addresses the men in that room as "you cunts." After this greeting, she slays them all with a sword. But most people writing about the movie fail to acknowledge that act, and concentrate on the word because they find it offensive, or assume that everyone else does. I happen to love that word. But that is neither here nor there. This movie is way more than a word. It is two words. It is FUCKING AWESOME.
The director here, making the poor little girl say the nasty word (and several others, mind you, which she does with gusto) is Matthew Vaughn. His big claim to fame until now is that he directed Layer Cake, the poor man's Guy Ritchie film featuring Daniel Craig's sexy self and Sienna Miller's sexy everything. Kick-Ass wipes the floor with Layer Cake.
Aaron Johnson, a Brit playing American, is Dave Lizewski, an invisible nobody in high school in Queens. Except that he's hot. Whoops. It's a movie. So one day he decides to be a superhero who calls himself Kick-Ass. Okay. Then he meets other fake superheros, including the foul-mouthed and excellent HitGirl (Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), who is in fact, her dad. It's nice to see Nic Cage in something I want to see him in these days. I've missed him. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are a trifle more skilled in the old fighting and weaponry game than poor Kick-Ass, who lands himself in the hospital the first time out. But then he gets laid, so it's cool.
Somehow, McLovin of Superbad fame is cast as a villain! Well, the son of a villain, really, but he IS a wanna-be villain at heart. Daddy Villain is played by Mark Strong, who was the villain in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, but who will forever be to me "Hey, is that Andy Garcia?" And he is a scary man.
There is a shit-ton of violence in this movie. A father shoots his daughter. All manner of people get sliced open and stabbed. A bazooka is housed in a penthouse. There are brass knuckles in play. A child lays waste to warehouses full of giant men. And all of it, dear reader, is phenomenally fun to watch.
I know there are people who don't dig violence in movies, and I can understand that. But this isn't a dude movie, where it's all big explosions and taglines and muscle shirts. Think "Kill Bill" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" instead. It's an R-rated superhero movie, guys. What could be bad?

Chloe

Holy hell. Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore had better have lost a bet. That is the only explanation for their appearance in this embarrassment. Did anyone read the script before signing their contract? My guess is no. Amanda Seyfried has paid her dues at this point, and I'm waiting for her to show up in something worthy other than Mean Girls. She's kind of alien-hot, right? Very pretty girl, but her eyes are way too far apart, and I could not stop noticing.
This was advertised as a thriller. It is many things, but a thriller is certainly not one of them. I expected to at least get a thrill out of it, what with all the boning that goes on and gets talked about, but no. Sexless sex, all of it. And the weirdest on-screen pairing of all time, maybe. That'd be Moore and Seyfried. Yup. That was awkward. It was supposed to be titillating (sorry) and salacious, but wound up being confusing and kind of funny.
Very short plot rundown: Moore plays a gynecologist, because everything in the damned movie is about poon, who thinks her husband, Neeson, is cheating on her (because he neglected to show up at his surprise birthday party and also he's a college professor and how many male college professors don't diddle their bright young things?) so she hires a prostitute (Seyfried), who, according to herself has always been good with words...to try to seduce him and then tell her all about what happened, in great detail. Good plan, sweets. Clearly things take a swift turn for the gay and forbidden. But it's funny even before that happens.
In a way, I'm happy that I saw this in a movie theater as opposed to Netflixing it. This way, I did not have the option of walking out (not after paying $12.50!), and I was comforted by the confused laughter around me. It's always helpful to know that you're not the only one who thinks they're watching a piece of crap. I hardly even minded the couple sitting behind me who literally did not stop chatting once during the entire movie. Not once. And if I'm not driven to homicidal rage by audience participation, it's a bad sign.

A Single Man

I've been wanting to write about this for a while now, but I'm not sure if I can give it the respect it deserves. This book is so incredibly layered and complex that it's nearly impossible to write about. The beauty, the joy, and the deep sadness that run through the novel are so dense and perfect that it seems almost criminal to write about them, like I might ruin everything. But if we don't write about we see, what touches us, then how will anyone know what we think? So I'm going to try. Maybe I'll fail, but I'm going to do my best.
Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, takes place over the course of a single day in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. Our main character, George, is in the throes of grief, having recently lost his lover in an accident. We follow him from his bed back to his bed, and in between we are floating just above his head, and marveling at what he sees and what he thinks. We teach his Classics class with him, we meet his friends and we join his conversations. Most importantly, though, we grasp exactly how difficult it really is to be alive. We all play a part, don't we? We are who people wish us to be, and to veer from that would be rude and useless.

There are so many passages and sentences from this novel that I wanted to drink in and hold onto forever, and so I'll share a few with you. It's the kind of writing that makes me insanely jealous not to have written, but lucky to have read.

Obediently, it washes, shaves, brushes its hair, for it accepts its responsibilities to the others. It is even glad that it has its place among them. It knows what is expected of it.
It knows its name. It is called George.

The overpowering sloth of sadness is upon him. The sloth that ends in going to bed and staying there until you develop some disease.


You could flirt but you couldn't fight; there wasn't even room to smack someone's face.

These are only a few examples of what I consider to be perfection on the page. Some bits of this novel take multiple readings in order to fully understand and inhale. And so you do just that. It took me much longer to read this than I had thought it would. Such simple writing, but so much within it.
The film, which, full disclosure, I saw before reading the book, is also gorgeous. Some people have described it as pretentious, but I say poo to you, silly cow. Tom Ford (the fashion maven, yes) managed to film this seemingly impossible-to-film book. He captured thoughts on camera and the film is sort of a series of paintings strung together. Colin Firth works his magic with his eyes and his entire soul. It is not sentimental in the least, though, which would have been a terrible fate.
So that is my try at talking about this book. I'm afraid it's more than a little muddled. So try reading it yourself and let me know if it changed your life as much as it changed mine.

The Runaways

Whoa. Dakota Fanning needs to BACK UP, CALM DOWN, and BE A VERY YOUNG GIRL AGAIN. Because now I'm freaked out and confused. I know I said almost exactly that in response to her appearance in New Moon, but she was wearing a cape in that movie, and here, she's wearing underpants, snorting crushed up pills off the floor, and having sex with Kristen Stewart. So I am, as I said, confused. What I am not confused about is that this was a pretty freaking good movie, and that Kristen Stewart makes me feel a little funny.
You do not necessarily have to know The Runaways' songs or history before watching this movie, but it wouldn't hurt to read up on them a little. You know who Joan Jett is, right? Good start. You know the song Cherry Bomb, yeah? It's on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack, and you've seen that movie. Right? And you might know who Lita Ford is. I didn't, until a friend a generation ahead of me laughed at my lack of knowledge and told me to listen to Kiss Me Deadly, at which point I was enlightened.
This is pre-I Love Rock and Roll Joan Jett. This is a whole band earlier, when these girls were in high school, or at least were high school age. Guitar player Joan was busy sniffing glue and dreaming of starting a band. Lead singer Cherie Currie (Fanning) was 15, working at Pups n Fries with her lookalike sister, and right on the cusp of massive fame and, very shortly after, a complete breakdown and end of singing career, which we get to witness. Stewart plays Jett, and looks the part, even cutting her own hair into the gross '75 mullet instead of using a wig, which most actresses would have done. Fanning trips around in Bowie-style platforms and Farrah hair and proves herself far beyond a child star. She's a real person now.
These two girls, along with lead guitarist Ford, bassist Robin (who seems to be a mishmash of several bassists the band went through), and drummer Sandy West, become The Runaways, managed and abused (verbally) by Kim Fowley, gloriously played by Michael Shannon, who was the best part of Revolutionary Road.
The girls do their own singing, and, I imagine, play their own instruments, and they do a damn good job. It's easy to forget here and there that they were really just kids. But sometimes, as in the very first shot of the movie, it's only too clear. I won't spoil the moment for you. A few events are left out of the film, as they must be, for running time's sake and plotlines. But what is there is hard, raw, hot, and rock n roll.

Lost in Austen

Good grief. Loads of fun, and soppy beyond reason. This is what happens when Britain realizes it cannot possibly film another rendition of a Jane Austen novel. They film a miniseries rendition of a Jane Austen novel with a modern person thrown into the mix to bash the plot about and ruin the novel as originally written, and entertain the pants off the audience. Of course, the audience has to be Austen-loving going into it, so if you hate all things empire-waisted, don't bother. I love all that stuff, so I had a blast watching this. It is treacly to the point that the friend I was watching it with felt compelled to say "sop, utter sop" aloud every once in a while, just in case I hadn't noticed...but she said it with such glee each time that it was glorious. AND we got to point out all the actors we recognized from other British works (hey, that's the other girl from Hex!!), and what's more fun than that?
You can skip the first 10 minutes of this miniseries, as it is awful. Here's what you'll miss: Amanda Price, a bored 20-something lady in London (Jemima Rooper, a girl from Hex) who keeps her copy of Pride and Prejudice on her person like a baby blanket, and longs for true love like that of Lizzie Bennett and Mr Darcy (specifically Mr Darcy as played by Colin Firth, MEOW -- and incidentally one of the funniest moments in the miniseries is a piss-take on that version). So naturally she is dating a boorish cad, the anti-Darcy.
After the too-long exposition, during which Elizabeth Bennett appears in Amanda's bathroom, they switch places, and hilarity ensues. So do ill-fitting marriages, a head wound, public drunkenness, and Sappho's poetry. Jane Austen probably didn't intend for that part to happen. Mr Darcy, played by the lovely Eliot Cowan, who you've never heard of, and nor had I, (hello, biceps) is sufficiently rude, but not charming enough by a mile. Rooper gets to purse her lips and tell people like it is for 3 hours, which she's sure good at, Emma Arterton (Strawberry Fields in the last James Bond movie) is Elizabeth Bennett in jeans with a cell phone, and Alex Kingston spends her time having fits. It turns out she's funny. Good girl.
As I said, this is a girly girly girly girl movie. There will be squealing. There might be crying. There will be comparisons to other Austen renditions. If you can't stomach that, leave the house and let us drool over Darcy in peace.

Alice in Wonderland (3D)

That's Alice in Underland, thanks very much. Among the changes to your favorite childhood tale that Tim Burton has made is the name of the very place his heroine winds up. Again. Yes, you see, this is Alice's second journey to (W)onderland. This time, she is all grown up and about to be thrown into marriage to a pompous redheaded lord. She'd rather fling herself down the rabbit hole again, and does exactly that. But Alice thinks this is all a dream. A nightmare, rather, that she has been having for years, where there are disappearing cats and blue caterpillars and a mad mad mad mad hatter.
The first time we meet Alice, in fact, is when she is very young and her father is trying to console her after one such nightmare. This would have all been fine, had she not so deeply resembled a fully made-up baby beauty queen...no names, please. It's in bad taste. :)
This new Wonderland is a classic Tim Burton utopia. Not a tree is ungnarled, not a branch unthorned. It is quite beautiful, and the 3D does it justice, though I'm sure that 2D is just fine, too. Our grownup Alice is pale and stubborn and less apt to play along than when she was younger. This time, the Mad Hatter is truly bonkers. But then, all the best people are.
For example, Johnny Depp, again playing against type. His habit of taking roles that go against his natural beauty works for him. With his blackened eyes and socket-effect orange wig and eyebrows , this Hatter is not only mad, he is sad. A sad and lonely hatter, constantly worried that he has fallen entirely off the map.
Helena Bonham-Carter is the evil bobble-head Red Queen, and is beastly to look at, while Anne Hathaway, as Red's sister, the White Queen, is a beauty as only Burton can dream up. Crispin Glover of 80s fame is the lecherous Knave of Hearts, aptly named Stain, and he wears his constant grimace nicely. Some of the best actors in this film are not seen at all, only heard. Alan Rickman is the Caterpillar, the great Stephen Fry is the wily and creepier than usual Cheshire Cat, Christopher Lee is the Jabberwocky, and Michael Sheen is the White Rabbit, dashing about wildly in his waistcoat.
Though there were children at the showing I went to, I'm not so sure this is a children's Alice. This is a dark and Gothic Alice, and some children may be confused. Then again, I suppose that part of the charm of the Alice story has always been its off-kilter-ness (?). Burton's version is not my favorite Alice, to be sure, but it is far better than I had expected it to be. Remember his dire adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Me too. That is not the case here.

Easy Virtue

Disclaimer: I have not read the play on which this movie is based, but I'm sure I'd love it, because I love Noel Coward.
Now then. I was psyched when I first saw previews for this movie, because it takes place in an English countryside estate in the 1930s and there are fox hunts and nasty little one-liners and Colin Firth and Kristen Scott Thomas, so it sounded pretty fail-safe. And it was, to a certain extent. I'd like to blame the jarringness of it on Jessica Biel's inclusion, but I cannot, since she actually doesn't do a bad job. In fact, this won her a lot of points with me, since the last thing I saw her in was Valentine's Day, in which she almost caused me to vomit on the floor. But then, everything about that movie was mind-numbingly awful, so it wasn't totally her fault. Anyway, in Easy Virtue, Biel is charming (that's not an insult, though it sounds like one) and manages not to be completely upstaged by Thomas.
Biel plays Larita, the unwelcome American racecar driver who has married the heir to the estate, which they promptly move into, to her despair and his elation. The husband is played by Ben Barnes, who was Prince Caspian in one of the Narnia reduxes that I learned not to watch after the first one. He has wonderful eyes. But Jessica Biel is outrageous-looking, and the idea that she would fall for him is absurd. No matter.
Colin Firth, who plays the patriarch, Mr Whittaker, could act an entire movie using only his eyes. I love his eyes. I love his nose and his mouth with its skinny lips and I love his voice and all the rest of him. He is perfection, and he has a way of playing sad men that no one can beat. And here, his lovely smirk is in full blossom. A former soldier in The Great War, there is a deep sadness that follows him, and much is made of the fact that he did not come directly home from war, but rather "wandered back" after taking some time to...play. Biel's character's arrival brings a spark to Whittaker's life, and they develop a sort of secret friendship. Meanwhile, Larita's husband is drawing farther and farther away, unable to understand why his wife, a city girl, is unhappy in the countryside with nothing to do.
This being a large-scale drawing-room comedy, every step that Larita takes, she is stopped by the first Mrs. Whittaker (Thomas). Every effort she makes to really become part of the family is halted and sniveled at. Her only real happiness after a bit is hopping into her car and driving too fast for "the thrill of escape." If only her husband would hop on board.

Away We Go

Something I like to do after watching a movie is read the NY Times review of it and compare it to what I thought of the film. In this case, the differences are vast, in that AO Scott basically shat on it, and I enjoyed it a lot and wished it would keep going.
Let's get the bad stuff out of the way immediately: the music is awful. Maybe I just think that because it reminded me of the music from Juno, which makes me remember how that movie tricked me into liking it until I put my brain back in my head and realized how offensive it was. Probably, though, I just don't like that music. You know, contemplative sensitive men with an acoustic guitar, strumming their way around love that walked away or whatever. Blah.
So that's the bad stuff. Now, the good stuff. John Krasinski has never been sexier. Dave Eggers, who wrote the screenplay, has never been less irritating. Allison Janney, well, she's Allison Janney, and she wins every time. And Maya Rudolph proves she is way more than just a funny girl from SNL.
The movie's premise is that Burt and Verona (Krasinski and Rudolph, oddly well-matched) are about to have a baby (the way in which they discover this is a bit awkward, but funny and romantic). In the 6th month of pregnancy, they realize they have nowhere to settle, so they have an adventure around the US and Canada, in which they bump into many kooky people and learn which surroundings fit them best and worst. AO Scott's review states that these characters, in not being crazed New-Agey super-PC "seahorse community"-envying, other people's baby-breast-feeders, or potty-mouthed parents waxing luridly about their childrens' fatness, are better than everyone else in the movie, and know it, and that is somehow a bad thing. It is not a bad thing. It is a true thing. His argument is much like the middle school (and onwards, really) argument that if the pretty girl knows she is pretty, she is also a bitch. A does not equal B, my dear.
The relationship between Burt and Verona is far beyond most movie romances, in that we see a friendship, not just a sexual relationship or co-dependence. They are a team. Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey play Tom and Munch, college buddies of the soon-to-be-parents, and have a similar team-like dynamic. They also have children and a social life, which should comfort any naysayers who are certain that people cease to be people once they spawn.
This is not a blockbuster. There are no explosions or ultimate betrayals or blood and guts. This is a movie about potentially real people looking for their own happiness, together. If knowing what they want and not standing for other people's idiocy makes them smug and better than the rest, so be it.

The Pride

Disappointing plays are more disappointing than disappointing movies, not just because of the amount of money spent on the ticket, but because if you fall asleep, the actors can see you. Kidding. Sort of.
This was Alexi Kaye Campbell's first play, so I give him many props for that. The problem was not the writing, it was the plots. Yes, both of them. See, what this play does is move back and forth in time, from 1958 to 2008, telling not quite related stories about not quite the same people. In 1958, Philip is married to Sylvia, Oliver is Sylvia's boss, and the two men have an illicit romance. In 2008, The two men are a recently separated couple, Philip having left Oliver, and Sylvia being the best friend. As I said, an interesting conceit.
Where everything goes awry, though, is in the fact that the play becomes, almost immediately, about a message, and not about people. The reason that Next Fall was so great, and why Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind, which I also recently saw, is so amazing, is that they are both plays that are about only the characters in them, and no one else. Message plays are lost on me, since in the end, there is nothing to cry over, or rejoice over, or even get angry about, since they're not really finished products. They aren't whole.
It was nice to see Hugh Dancy onstage, though, after all the raves he got in Journey's End, which I completely missed. After seeing him only in movies, and only sentimental movies at that, I was pleased to see him go in a whole new direction. Ben Whishaw as Oliver was good, too, but I have to admit that I was distracted by his constant emission of spittle (I know, it happens in plays, but sometimes it gets out of control), and his near-emaciated body. Andrea Riseborough (from Happy Go Lucky, which everyone should see) does a great job in both decades, changing her accent and demeanor more than the boys have to. Adam James pops up a few times as various other characters for one scene each, and steals each one fiercely. Bless.
One comparison I will make between The Pride and Next Fall (the two plays I've put here, and also both about gay male relationships) is that there is only one kiss in each play. Terribly different kisses, but only one, which struck me as odd both times. When people are in love, they kiss. They kiss hello, goodbye, or for no special reason, just to be close to the person they love. But in Next Fall, it was only the smallest peck, and in The Pride, the kiss was violent and sad, and led to a rape scene, or not, depending who you ask. But it struck me both times; these plays about love, with hardly any physical passion shown.

New Moon (Twilight 2)

Yeah...I watched it. Not good. Kind of hilarious, really. The best parts were when Jacob took his shirt off and cut his hair, and the scene of Victoria and her hair running through the forest.

Poor R Pattz has difficulty again, but now I'm wondering whether to blame it on direction or if he's just a shit actor. Nicely done on those abs, though, Rob. You've come a long way from Little Ashes. The beautiful Kristen Stewart is done wrong as Bella Swann. She's done some good work in other films. Try "Panic Room," "In The Land of Women," and "Adventureland."

A vampire movie where no one gets bitten or has sex is like the Winter Olympics without figure skating; why would anyone bother? Stephenie (sic) Meyer, she of abstinence-loving authordom, clearly disagrees with me, hence the whole damned Cullen crew, running around like a pack of white washed idiots with nothing to chew on. Nor any lines to speak or scenes to be in, for that matter. Alice pops in now and then to make some concerned faces, but Mom and Dad are largely absent, the blonde one gets one line, the huge one gets to be an idiot for a second, and the young one has a meltdown and disappears. Edward disappears, too, but at least he looks pained about it. Everyone in the movie looks pained at everything, actually. NO ONE IS HAPPY IN FORKS. This point is really driven home by the circling shots of Bella sitting in a chair after Edward ditches her, with titles spelling out the months that are going by. Even her dad yells at her to snap the fuck out of it, boyfriend is not coming back. Take a pill, Bells.

Ooooh, also, there's werewolves. Not-great CGI werewolves, to be sure (and a far cry from the intensely creepy Lucy-humping beast in Bram Stoker's Dracula, but why even make the comparison?), who in their human form are some hot hot hot bags of muscle with spiky hair.

Because the gods hate us, we are forced to go almost 2 full hours of watching Bella sulk, tease Jacob, and summon phantom Edward (yes) before heading to Italy. That's where the Volturi live, you see. Volturi seems to be Vampire for "bad motherfuckers," and they really slam some life into this puppy. Waiting within the Volturi mansion is a scary and badly be-wigged Michael Sheen, and Dakota Fanning, whose power is to inflict pain by looking at someone, and confusing the audience by looking all grown-up and more dangerous than the wolves or that moron who got schooled by the Cullens in the first book/movie.

At best, New Moon gives us a chance to look at some gorgeous people and marvel at how gorgeous they are. It also relieves us of the pain of having to read Bella's nauseating narration from the books, which is why the movie is only a little over 2 hours long instead of a full year.
Having said all that, I dug it. It was pure entertainment and zero art, which is what a girl needs sometimes.

Team Victoria.

ps. If you want some really hot no-sex vamp-human action, look to Buffy and Angel. If you want some really hot absolutely yes-sex vamp-human action, look to Buffy and Spike.

Little Ashes

I'm having trouble finding out whether this was ever released in theaters, or if it was straight-to-DVD, as it should be. I guess that Robert Pattinson's involvement means it has to have been released, at least post-Twilight.
Here's the thing, though: if you want to see him act, look elsewhere. If you want to see his face (which is, admittedly, kind of lovely), then there's tons of closeups here for you to gaze at. Of course, several have the added bonus of Dali's mustache attached. Yes, everyone's favorite vampire is playing Salvador fucking Dali!!! A more confusing casting choice there has never been, with the possible exception of Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl.
Along with his face, we get to see his pubes (twice), makeout scenes with Javier Beltran, playing Frederico Lorca quite well, and some unfortunately hilarious efforts at emoting. Oh, R-Pattz.
This falls into the category of "Good idea, but you've forgotten a script and a plot." Too bad. It could have been moving and politically driven, but instead we're left with a disjointed effort, full of useless drawn-out bicycling shots and half conversations.
Another time, perhaps.

The Proposition

A Guy Pearce Western!! So he's playing...an Irishman. In Australia. Okay. Now that that's out of the way, I can talk about how fucking amazing this movie is. I am wary of Westerns and the like, due to the large possibility of boredom. Not so here. Though the whole movie is not a shoot-em-up extravaganza, it IS full, top to bottom, of one thing most Westerns sorely lack: good acting.
The opening credits begin the story, which starts out happily enough, with a montage of family photos. By the end of the credits, though, we are shown the aftereffects of a revolting crime that gets the action moving.
Pearce plays a (former?) criminal in the 1880s, one of the three Burns brothers, who is given a horrible proposition by a police captain who has tracked him down. This tricky man is played sweatily and somehow sympathetically by Ray Winstone, full Sexy Beast accent intact.
The scenery in this film is a character itself. The sun beats down white rays onto a barren desert, the sand and flies swirling into eyes and parched mouths. By some miracle, Emily Watson, as the sheriff's wife, is able to maintain a garden.
The Aborigines play a large role here as well. They are the servants, the sidekicks, the "barbarians," the translators, and the jailed.
Danny Huston is perfect as an uncaught, terrifying, violent man to whom family means everything. Richard Wilson is heartbreaking as the youngest brother, used as a pawn in big mens' games.
There is violence aplenty here, some inferred, some stomach-turning scenes, but none are to be missed, and none are purely to shock.
The characters sound stock: 3 brothers, one noble, one mad, one innocent, a captain unsure of his true feelings, a shocked wife, a monologue-delivering drunk (John Hurt), and a villainous lawman. But you've not seen them like this before.

Eros

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Next Fall

What is religion? Who is God? Does God matter when we face love? What if we love God more than our partner? What if our partner believes we are going to hell? Does any of it really matter in the end?
These are all questions posed in Geoffrey Naufft's tremendous drama, Next Fall. All the cliche reactions occur, to be sure (I laughed, I cried, I wanted to touch the actors), but I was affected by this show more than I have been by theater in a while. There are shows that I have seen where I have been impressed by the writing, the guts, and the mind that must be crazy to think up those scenarios (Shepard...), but Next Fall touched me in a way that I have been waiting for.
This play made me yearn to be in love.
A very deep sadness runs through the play, sometimes voiced, always apparent. Luke believes Adam is going to hell unless he accepts Jesus as his savior. Luke does not want his family to know Adam. To know that he is his boyfriend, that he exists at all. 5 years, and Adam is a hell-bound non-entity. But through it all, Adam stays. He watches Luke pray, allows himself to be referred to as a co-worker to Luke's father. But he also lies on top of Luke, strokes his hair, loves him completely.
And then the tragedy, at which point all things must converge and make themselves known.
Patrick Heusinger, who plays the believer and young lover Luke is, without a doubt, serious eye candy. But he possesses an innocence and a caddish charm as well. He is not just a pretty face (and best butt on the NY stage, probably). His frustration with Adam's questions and teasing remarks about God are evident on his face and in his body language, but, just as Adam stays with Luke despite his beliefs, so does Luke stay with Adam in spite of his warring views.
A young man who is sure of his place in heaven, and his (slightly) older boyfriend (an excellent Patrick Breen) without such a sure spot. A simple premise. An enormous lot of questions. A fantastic play.

Edmond

It was a ridiculous play, and now it's a ridiculous movie. Well, technically 5 years ago, it became such, but I just saw it for the first time.
First performed in 1982, the year I was born, Edmond really stirred something in people, made them uncomfortable. But when I saw it performed in 2003, it bored me. And when I saw the film of it, it made me angry. Not because of the language, but because of how hard it was trying to hit me on the head and shout at me. GET ANGRY!! it said. Get angry that everyone is a racist. Get angry that men hate women. Get angry that corporate drones are driven to murder when their pent-up fears come bursting forth. And at the end, laugh as Edmond becomes a vile combination of the things he has always despised. A prison boyfriend to a black man. A LOVING prison boyfriend.
Edmond's hatred is never fully explained in my opinion, though I'm sure many people would disagree. His impetus for leaving his wife, which comes in the form of a Tarot-card-reading old biddy, is absurd. "You are not where you belong," she tells him. So he chooses to leave and wander 8th avenue, stopping in every sleazy sex joint on the block. He doesn't understand how strip clubs work, or "health clubs" with lace-adorned "masseuses" waiting to hand out their services. He is had by a 3-card Monte conman. He slits a pimp's throat and slashes a waitress to death after she allows him to screw her.
Perhaps if the screenplay had not been written by David Mamet, who wrote the play as well, this could have been a better film. William H Macy does all he can as Edmond, spiraling incredibly quickly, into despair. Julia Stiles does good work as the doomed waitress, with the bad luck of running into someone whose prejudices come flooding out, knife-first, when he is finally allowed a chance to voice them.
I presume that we are supposed to feel something like sympathy for Edmond at the end, with his good night kiss to his boyfriend, initially his rapist. This man wraps his arms around Edmond, newly bald and mustachioed, and Edmond smiles, for now he is happy. He has found happiness in jail, that place he knew he would be happy in, for it is simple. Jail is his opportunity for redemption and safety and love.
Honestly, this movie made me uncomfortable, but not via the language or the story, but the feeling of wonkiness it left me with. Nothing looked right afterwards. So maybe it worked.