NEW FEATURE!!! Ed’s Picks for Your Netflix

In high school, back when my friends and I were old enough to rent R-rated movies, but not yet old enough to go to the local bars, we would find ourselves at a loss for things to do during the humid nights of our summer vacation. Most often, when we weren’t throwing water-balloons at strangers or playing Car Tag (it’s exactly what it sounds like), we’d end up browsing through our local Blockbuster looking for movies to rent. Now that we’re all older and have gone our separate ways , we rarely, if ever, get together to watch movies. Movies have been regulated strictly to date nights and our yearly tradition of going to the movies on Thanksgiving and Christmas night.

It’s not the act of watching the movie with all my friends that I miss; though that was always a good time, especially if it was a comedy or action flick. What I do miss is debating what movie to choose. Some people liked action movies, others comedies or dramas. I usually leaned toward the independent or foreign titles (back then my pretentiousness knew no bounds). Leaving Blockbuster with a movie everyone agreed on was a laborious task. We’d constantly evaluate each others choices. “Nah, that looks shitty, let’s rent this.” or “I’ve already seen that, it sucks!” or “Fuck foreign, let’s get a comedy” were our basic, but effective, critiques.

It was a great way to get to know one another as friends and once a movie was picked, experiencing the movie together brought us closer. References and one-liners from movies we all had seen peppered our conversations and if you weren’t part of the movie watching group our conversations were bewildering.

With all that said, Ed’s Picks for Your Netflix is in no way going to replicate that experience. That’s not really the point. This feature is a way for me to share what I’ve been renting and enjoying, so the next time your browsing through Blockbuster or loading up your Netflix queue you might recognize a title from this site and give it a try.

It’s my way of leaning over your shoulder and saying “Nah, don’t rent that crap, try this one”. First up:

Audition (1999)

Anyone familiar with the films by Japanese director Takashi Miike will not be surprised by Audition’s gruesome aspects. What they will find surprising is the relatively tame and funny first half. Audition is about a widowed middle-aged film executive named Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi), who, at the urging of his teenage son and the help of a friend, decides to hold an cattle-call audition for his second wife. While reading through the heaps of resumes of young actresses, he falls for a beautiful candidate, Asami (Eihi Shiina).

At this point, the premise is goofy and the tone is light-hearted. We watch as Shigeharu and his friend sit through endless auditions of wannabe actresses, some showcasing their bizarre and comical talents. Cast Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson as Shigeharu and Asami, write up a happy ending and BAM! you have a potentially hilarious romantic comedy. Unfortunately for Shigeharu, Miike has more fiendish ideas up his sleeve.

After the couple begin dating and take a weekend trip, Shigeharu becomes so blinded by his love he fails to realize that he has never seen Asami’s apartment, heard mention of her family or friends and he knows nothing of her past. Once he discovers that Asami’s previous lovers have all gone missing his suspicions arise and he does a little detective work. To his horror, Asami turns out to be a violent psychopath with a childhood marred by abuse and a patiently cultivated talent for torturing her paramours.

As with his other movies (Ichi the Killer, for example) Miike takes pleasure in showing skin-crawling depictions of extreme torture and Audition is no exception. Needles and flesh cutting wire play significant roles in the ghastly finale. But this is no mindless torture porn like Hostel: Part II or the horrendous Saw franchise. Miike is showing a women taking revenge on men who have always treated her like a possession, to be tried-out, interviewed and then cast aside for the next young thing. You may agree or disagree with the extreme punishment Shigeharu endures, but it won’t be a scene you’ll soon forget.


Funny Games (1997)

There is absolutely nothing funny about this movie. As a matter of fact, I might make you feel pretty lousy for even watching it the whole way through. Which, as far as I can tell, is exactly the point. A father, mother and son go up to their lake house for a week of vacationing and boating when they are held captive by two sadistic young men. The two men make a bet with the family that all three of them will be dead by the following morning. The viewer is actually invited to play along by Paul, one of the young murders. Throughout the film Paul includes the audience in his evil games by talking in asides and casually winking and smirking at the camera.

Director Michael Haneke deliberately provokes the audience with these techniques that break the fourth wall. Haneke is plainly asking the viewer to wonder why they are still watching this. It makes you question whether or not you enjoy watching people suffer, which is not an easy question to ask yourself or answer honestly.

I rented this because Haneke has remade Funny Games for U.S. distribution with Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt and Tim Roth in the starring roles. I wanted to be able to compare the two. After seeing the original, I can’t see how anyone would think this would fly with American audiences. Watching Funny Games gives the viewer some self-awareness that will make you wonder why watching movie violence is sometimes appealing and not always appalling. And being made to think is not something American movie going audiences are too keen on doing.

Scratch (2001)

Scratch, an energetic and (if you have the right speakers) loud documentary about the art of DJing, proves what I suspected all along: It’s more fun to be a DJ then it is to listen to someone DJ. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad about the movie specifically. It’s well researched and well filmed. All of the entertaining interviewees seem to really enjoy talking about and explaining what they do for a living. My only complaint is that after two hours or listening to the “wicka wicka wicka” sound of records being scratched, the dead thud of recycled drum-loops and overly pompous DJ’s musically battling one another, it begins to wear on the ears. (Maybe I'm just getting old...)

However, anyone who was ever curious about what exactly a DJ does should watch this movie. By the end you’ll know all you need to know. All of the famous DJs: Qbert, Mix Master Mike, DJ Shadow, Grand Master DXT (and on and on and on) make appearances and talk enthusiastically about what drew them to becoming DJs and what they hope DJing has done for music and it’s listeners. Made back in 2001 when turntablism was arguably at its peak, it’s entertaining to listen to the DJs philosophize where they think the genre will go in the future. (Writing this in 2008, however, it seems the genre reached a plateau shortly after this movie hit theaters). My post viewing headache aside, as a documentation of a musical genre and the interesting people who create, promote and enjoy it, Scratch is as good as it gets.

DVD Review: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

I’m about to tell you that a documentary of one man’s quest to dethrone the reigning Donkey Kong champion is one of the best documentaries I have seen in a long time. You have to realize The King of Kong is not just a film about man-sized children geeking out over arcade games. It’s about man’s ego and the desire to leave a legacy. It’s about celebrity and the things people will do to preserve it. It’s about picking yourself up off the ground after a lifetime of defeat and continuing to strive for perfection no matter what the psychological cost.

The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters concerns the conflict between two main characters: Billy Mitchell, the self-assured reigning champion of Donkey Kong who has held that title since the early 1980s, and Steve Wiebe, a sad-sack father of three, who upon getting laid-off from Boeing in 2005 decides to play Donkey Kong obsessively. Surprising everyone, most of all himself, he reaches a level good enough to compete with the champ.

Along with those two main characters are countless other nerds, losers and dweebs (though after watching the film you probably won’t see them that way). Some support Billy, mostly out of reverence to the master (even when he refuses to play Steve face to face) and some, including Roy “Mr. Awesome” Shildt, who has a long running grudge against Billy, support Steve. Battle lines are drawn, names get called and it starts to get ugly.


Watching the die hard gamers play, you see a strange serenity and seriousness come over them. Seen in their element, (parked in front of a glowing, beeping arcade game) these societal misfits become athletes, intense with concentration, emboldened by competition. The documentary enters you into their world of classic arcade games and doesn’t pass judgment on them or offer them up to be laughed at by the audience. And that is one of the reasons The King of Kong is such a great documentary. It immerses you completely in a subculture most people would never encounter and changes your opinion of that subculture with honest depictions of that world's inhabitants and several servings of humor. Sure the gamers are a bit obsessive and socially awkward, but you’ll come away looking at these men as competitors with drive and ambition, not just as pale dorks huddled in a dark arcade.

A Flurry of Reviews!

I know you’ve noticed. I rarely update this site. Or at least, I don’t update it enough for you to check back regularly without my prodding MySpace bulletins.

I only sporadically update for the following reasons:

(a.) I’m lazy
(b.) I’m busy
(c.) I’m too dashingly handsome to deny the world my striking features by hiding behind a computer screen all night
or
(d.) all of the above

(hint: the answer is (c.) of course)

So, because my beauty must be shared I didn’t get a chance to write long reviews for each movie that I saw the past month (and I saw a bunch). Here are a few miniaturized reviews for the short attention span you proudly embrace as your own.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

I’ve never seen so much fake blood in a movie, let alone a musical! It sprays and splatters across the screen so frequently and in such quantity it becomes laughable. My initial shock at seeing so much phony blood was the only reaction I had to this underwhelming movie. The music is bland, made more so by the plain singing voices of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, along with other actors not known for their vocal range (Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen). Burton does a good job of creating a dark, gothic, industrial London, but that has become a bit of a Burton cliché of late. It’s not all bad, of course. If you liked the original Stephen Sondheim musical you’ll most likely enjoy this capable, well-constructed, big screen adaptation.

Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

Something about this movie rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the fact that I was supposed to root for a womanizing, alcoholic Texas congressman who becomes a warmongering, alcoholic Texas congressman! What an unbelievable character arc! Maybe it was Julia Roberts playing an ultra-rich, ultra-right wing lobbyist who is a super bitch, but is also super in bed! I don’t believe it! Maybe it was because I was expected to like a man who funded and started a war which supposedly contributed to the fall of Soviet Russia, but also destabilized an already shaky region, allowed a fanatical Islamic regime to coalesce and gain control of said region, and all the while training and arming said Islamic fanatics who would then use their knowledge and networking to attack the US some 15 years later. Whoop! Charlie Wilson, you are a true American hero!

Eastern Promises (2007)

Russians might be the scariest, most rotten people in the world. At least according to the movies that is. (Russians brutally invade Afghanistan in both Charlie Wilson’s War and The Kite Runner. Sweeny Todd is the exception, of course.)

In Eastern Promises Naomi Watts plays a midwife who helps a dying young girl deliver a baby. The young girl turns out to be an underage Russian immigrant who was forced into prostitution by the Russian mob. Watts naively starts snooping around a Russian mob hangout to get to the bottom of who killed the young girl. Viggo Mortensen plays Nikolai, a frightening Russian mobster who will stop at nothing to become an underworld boss, but develops a soft-spot for the plucky Watts, which puts his loyalty to the test.

David Cronenberg directed this film and in his typical fashion the violence is grisly (anyone up for a naked knife fight in a sauna?) and the subject matter is pretty abrasive. As in A History of Violence, Cronenberg continues to explore the theme of violence and butchery hiding just below the surface of polite, ordered society. Just scratch a little and evil men with wicked intentions start to creep up.

The Kite Runner (2007)

The Kite Runner is a faithful, well-made film adaptation of the book that everyone I know who doesn’t usually read books has read, and raved about. Or so I’m told it’s a faithful rendition. I haven’t actually read the book yet. (It’s on my list, don’t worry). For those of you who don’t know the story, its broken into two parts. One part is about an Afghani man named Amir, who goes back to Afghanistan to save his nephew from becoming an sex slave to an Taliban warlord. The most emotional part of the movie, however, is the extended flashback of Amir’s childhood in Tehran and his friendship with his servant, Hassan (who happens to be Amir’s nephew’s father. It’s a complicated story that the film nimbly navigates).

Hassan is played by Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada who has a face of pure sadness and the filmmakers use it for all its worth. One look at his sad eyes and turned-down mouth breaks your heart because you know terrible things are destined for him – like getting beaten up and anally raped by sadistic bullies and then banished by Amir, his embarrassed and cowardly friend. Adult Amir goes back to Afghanistan years later not only to save Hassan’s child but also to redeem himself for his earlier cowardice.

For some reason The Kite Runner didn’t fare well with critics and I can’t really see why. It was filmed competently by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland) and written for maximum dramatic heft by David Benioff (25th Hour). Sometimes the film did feel a little bit like a made-for-TV sob story, and the kite fighting (yes, KITE-fighting) sequences looked awkward at best, but overall, the story was an emotionally cathartic and politically relevant tale of a man’s struggle for redemption. Maybe too many people read the book and were eager to say what all "Readers" say when they see a film adaptation: "Sure the movie was pretty good, but the book was better."

ED’S FAVORITE FILMS OF 2007!!!

In an effort to feel like a Real Professional Film Critic I’ve waded into the deep waters of my memory to dredge out and create a monolithic assemblage of movies lucky enough to be deemed...

ED’S FAVORITE FILMS OF 2007!!!

(Trumpets blasting!! Crowds cheering in orgasmic glee!!)

I’ve reviewed a few of the films on this site previously, and you can follow the link to that specific review if you wish to enlighten yourself further. The movies I didn’t review beforehand have a succinct blurb stating my infallible opinion following their title.

All kidding aside, this was a fantastic year for movies and I’ve enjoyed being able to watch as many of them as I could squeeze into my schedule and report back my opinions on a few of them on this meager blog. And thank you for caring enough about my feelings to actually read it! So please, enjoy the list (as much as one can possibly enjoy a list), and if I’ve left off your favorite film of the year, let me know in the comments!

PREPARE TO BE AWED:

ED’S FAVORITE FILMS OF 2007

1. There Will Be Blood – Read Review

2. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly – Read Review

3. No Country for Old Men – Read Review

4. This is England­ -Thomas Turgoose is remarkable as Shaun, a friendless 13-year-old growing up in England circa 1983. He meets some skinheads (the non-racist kind) who take him in and show him how to have fun. That is until a rival skinhead named Combo (Stephen Graham) who is fresh out of jail, takes the impressionable young lad under his wing and introduces him to violent British nationalism. Director Shane Meadows’ film is a potent and heartfelt coming of age story and a memorable slice of what it must have been like to grow up in Thatcher’s England in the downtrodden 1980s.

5. Persepolis – Apparently I’m a sucker for a good coming of age story, since Persepolis, This is England and Juno are all films where the main character grows up and learns about who they are. This animated gem, based on the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi (who, along with Vincent Paronnaud, directed the film) is about an outspoken young girl growing up and struggling with her identity in post-revolution Iran. The visually stunning black and white artwork is so beautiful I gave myself a headache trying to read the subtitles (it’s in French) and watch the images fly by on the screen. Intensely personal even though major political themes are discussed, the energetic story is captivating from start to finish.

6. Control – Read Review

7. The Lives of Others – This was released very early in 2007, but it still stands out in my mind. Ulrich Mühe plays an officer in the East German secret police who is assigned to spy on suspected “traitor” Sebastian Koch and his lover. Mühe becomes increasingly absorbed in the lives of his subjects and is faced with an impossible decision when it is time to turn his new “friend” over to the authorities. The film portrays the climate of paranoia, suffocation and loneliness of Communist era Germany with amazing detail and all of the performances are top notch.

8. Juno – See Review

9. Michael Clayton – The fact that I work in a Manhattan law firm might have contributed to how much I liked this movie about law firms and the shady corporations they protect. For days afterward I was lurking around my office trying to predict who my firm’s “Fixer” was. The firm’s fixer in this movie is George Clooney who strongly plays a down-on-his-luck attorney suddenly realizing he has a conscience when he is told to clean up a legal mess made by a colleague who has a nervous breakdown. Tilda Swinton is also fantastic as an ambitious in-house counsel for a bio-corporation who’s product may be poisoning the public.

10. The Bourne Ultimatum – This film is just one long fucking chase scene (and I mean that in a good way). Energetic, loud, and full of running, fighting, shooting and one hell of a car chase at the end, this third installment in the Bourne franchise is an action flick on amphetamines. Yes, it’s an action movie, and you know it has to be good because I hate to praise action movies because for every awesome Borne flick there are mountains of miserable, overly violent schlock, pleasing only to mouth-breathers who like to watch Jason Statham blow things up. So trust me, The Bourne Ultimatum is a perfect capper to the heart pumping trilogy and a whole lot of fun.

ALSO!!!

The following are movies I didn’t see this year that might have made my list if I was an actual paid film critic and not doing this in my spare time.

In no particular order:

The Savages – A depressing low budget flick about two dejected academics (starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney) struggling with their father’s march to death. This will probably be satisfying to my masochistic miserable side.

Gone Baby Gone – I hate Ben Affleck, but thankfully he’s not on screen at all in his directorial debut about a kidnapping of a little girl in Boston. Word is it’s pretty good. And depressing. Nice.

Charlie Wilson’s War – Feels like it could have a Confessions of a Dangerous Mind vibe, (Cold-War cavorting) which is fine by me. Plus Tom Hanks playing against character as a lecherous congressman who tries to take down Soviet Russia is a welcomed change from his squeaky clean image.

I’m Not There – Most people I know who have seen this have had mixed to negative things to say about it. But I refuse to write it off. Critics raved enough about this that I need to check it out. And even if I ended up hating this Bob Dylan biopic (notable for splitting Dylan’s life into six parts, each played by different actors) I might’ve still included it on my top ten list just because I’m a pretentious prick.

Eastern Promises – Ever since Michael Ironside made that dude’s head explode with his telekinetic powers in Scanners, David Cronenberg has been a favorite director of mine. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t seen this film about a woman (Naomi Watts) who encounters the Russian mob in London. It’s already on DVD for fuck sake! It’s also on the top of my Netflix queue.

Once – Another one of those movies which ended up at the top of many critic’s “best of” lists but everyone I know who has seen it hasn’t really liked it. Plus it’s a musical about two Dublin street musicians who fall in love. Sounds a little mushy for my manly style. I’ll probably check it out, but just for curiosity’s sake.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Paul Thomas Anderson has described his latest film There Will Be Blood as a boxing match between two forceful, driven men. One, a successful oil man (Daniel Day-Lewis) with his determined sights set on a small California town which has the (mis)fortune of sitting above an ocean of oil, and the other, Daniel’s nemesis, a local, self-ordained minister (Paul Dano) who wishes to use the profits of the discovery to advance his church’s influence outside his desolate town’s limits. Both men’s pummeling blows come one after the other, each blast weighing a heavy toll on the men until they are reduced to their shattered ideals and battered flesh. This film is the most powerful display of greed corroding men to their bilious cores that I have ever seen.

We initially meet oil prospector and driller Daniel Plainview (Mr. Lewis) deep within the earth, chomping away at the hard, cold ground with a dull pickaxe. He looks like a sinewy vampire driven to exhaustion by an unholy thirst for blood. But soon the oil is seeping from the ground like black blood from a deep puncture wound. Daniel’s thirst is quenched momentarily, but more is required. With the help of his angel faced son H.W., (Dillon Freasier) which Daniel adopts for the purpose of making him seeming more like a “family man”, Daniel snatches up a farm in a shabby town called Little Boston, where nothing grows and oil collects in puddles on the ground.

Besides oil, Little Boston is home the feverish Reverend Eli Sunday (Mr. Dano) and his wild dreams of salvation through suffering and magical healing through prayer. Eli’s faith in God is only rivaled by Daniel’s faith in Capitalism and the two butt heads savagely, laying waste to the town and, ultimately, to each other.

The pace to the film is slow and deliberate. Each shot looks painstakingly assembled and it is obvious everyone involved with the production was operating at the top of their game. The unhurried shots echo Terrence Malick’s pastoral film Days of Heaven but only much darker and foreboding. Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s score adds much to the ominous tone, rattling and clanging like an overburdened oil rig one moment and the next evoking a blissfully eerie symphony.

Daniel Day-Lewis fully inhabits the role of Daniel Plainview, an entrepreneur of singular vision who will not detour his desires for any man or any god. As Plainview, Mr. Day-Lewis doesn’t chew scenery, he obliterates it. When he is on screen it is almost impossible to look away (which is a shame, because each shot is so luscious). His characters vitriolic loathing of mankind is so venomous it almost seeps through the screen. The fire burning in his eyes when one of his oil rigs explodes is not a reflection of the spurting flames around him, it’s a raging firestorm within him scorching to the surface. It is indeed a powerful performance and one that has continued to give me shivers days after seeing the film.

The only (minor) criticism I can muster is that the film is not at all subtle. That is not to say it is a “message movie”. There are no rousing speeches or lectures or anything as blatant as that. However, it is about God and Money battling it out as personified by two larger then life men who are both stubborn and troubled and totally alone in the harsh, filthy world. And unlike No Country for Old Men, which this movie is being pitted against by most critics for best picture of the year (unfairly for both films), there is no ambiguity, which No Country was chock full of. At the end of There Will Be Blood, there promise in the title is realized and there is no doubt who the victor is.

Juno (2007)

I usually try to avoid declaring bland platitudes, especially in my movie blog, but something should be said about seeing a movie in the right environment. Ok, here it goes:

PLATITUDE: Seeing a movie in the right environment can really enhance an otherwise mediocre movie.

Take for example the movie Dazed and Confused. Add a few bong-rips and some stoner friends and not only do you have a great movie, you have a great afternoon. Or take Titanic and add a passionate make-out session with your date. That's a damn good date. (Tangent: I remember seeing Jackass: The Movie while in college in a theater filled to capacity with drunk college students who reacted to every stunt Steve-O and crew pulled off with shouts and howling laughter. People were throwing popcorn and running up and down the aisles. In any other movie that behavior would have been unbearable, but paired with the senseless violence on screen it remains one of my favorite movie-going experiences.)

So with that in mind, take me at my word that a theater in Union Square, surrounded by indie rock infected NYU students is the right environment to see Juno, Jason Reitman’s new flick about a mouthy teenage girl and her adventure in pregnancy. I saw multiple angular haircuts in the audience. One chick was wearing huge plastic eyeglass frames with no lenses. These are Juno’s people. They laughed at the so-square-its-hip dialogue (“Wizard”, said in place of “awesome,” was exclaimed more then once) and as soon as geek heartthrob Michael Cera appeared on the screen just about every female in the place began to giggle and sigh longingly.

And that appears to be the filmmakers intent. They want you watch, to giggle, to sigh. The movie is kinda funny at times, kinda serious at other times, but the one constant is it’s sweetness. Ellen Page, who plays Juno, our impregnated main character, is as cute as a button, prancing around her snowy town in assorted hipster regalia and at one point calling up an abortion clinic (“Hi, I’d like to procure a hasty abortion”) on a phone shaped like a hamburger.

I was a bit surprised by how toothless the script was. If you didn’t know better you could easily confuse this with a Miranda July film and even in her melancholic movie Me and You and Everyone We Know, there was that hilarious “poop sex” banter. (“Back and forth, forever” still cracks me up). I was expecting a little more edge and little less whimsy. The combination of director Jason Reitman, whose last film, Thank You For Smoking, contained one of the most gleefully amoral characters in recent memory (Aaron Eckhart as a remorseless tobacco lobbyist), and Diablo Cody, who entered the public consciousness with her book Candy Girl, an autobiography of her days as a stripper, almost seems destined to make a film drenched in sex and antiheroes. Instead we get a movie about a twee high school romance almost derailed by an unplanned pregnancy.

With all that said, I still liked it. Very much so, in fact. Once my attitude re-adjusted from black-comedy curmudgeon to romantic-comedy sap I was open to all of the movie’s charms. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, as Juno’s shocked but supportive parents, are hilarious in their roles and surprisingly avoid cliché to come off like genuine, loving parents. And Jennifer Gardner and Jason Bateman as the potential step-parents for Juno’s future spawn are equally enjoyable to watch as a yuppie couple coming to terms with their impending parenthood.

The mostly acoustic soundtrack (lots of Belle and Sebastian and one prominently featured Moldy Peaches song) fits the mood perfectly. Music selection is very important in these types of movies. Just ask The Shins. If it wasn’t for Garden State , their “Band That Will Change Your Life” moniker wouldn’t exist.

Of course, similarities to Knocked Up, this year’s other comedy about young people and unplanned pregnancy, no doubt have to be mentioned and I would mention them here except for, besides the main premise, the two movies aren’t at all alike. Whereas Knocked Up is about man-child Seth Rogan finally realizing he’s an immature goofball and growing up to become a dad, Juno is about a girl who thinks she knows more then the adults, gets pregnant, realizes she doesn’t know squat, and, in realizing this, comes of age, as they say. The only similarity I can see between the two is that they are both very funny.

So, yeah, returning to my earlier platitude, seeing a mediocre movie in the right environment can vastly improve that average movie. However, seeing a good movie, like Juno, in the right environment can make that movie great and that movie-going experience one to remember.

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

Ah, whimsy. What would life be without it? Dark, cold and cynical most likely. Even to a bitter pessimist like myself, that sounds pretty terrifying. Lars and the Real Girl, on the other hand, portrays a world that is ALL whimsy, and let me tell you, it’s a far more unrecognizable and frightening world.

In Lars' world everyone is nice and knows one another. They all go to church. They sing in the choir. It’s a place where a lonely man can pretend a life-sized sex doll is a real woman and not one person makes a mean spirited remark. As a matter of fact, the townsfolk are so unbelievably kind they too begin treating the sex doll like it’s a real person! Someone needs to make public the coordinates of this mystical village so we can firebomb it before whatever “kindness germ” they all are infected with contaminates the real world, and gross concepts like “peace” and “understanding” start to flourish.

Ahem, anyway, the story is about Lars (played with twitchy sincerity by Ryan Gosling), a introverted recluse who purchases a life-sized sex doll and pretends it’s his girlfriend. Instead of telling Lars that his paramour is, in fact, plastic and latex instead of flesh and blood, his brother and sister-in-law, on doctor’s instructions, play along and convince the entire town to play along as well. And everyone does! With little to no resistance!

And there within lies the problem. Lars and the Real Girl is so unfortunately divorced from reality that it is hard to take the drama seriously. While it contains moments of tender emotion and a few mild laughs, the movie is so bogged down by its own syrupy sweetness that it fails to leave much of an impression or even make much sense.

It’s almost inconceivable how someone like Lars, who is surrounded by loving neighbors, could possibly end up so alone he resorts to a sex doll for companionship. His sister-in-law (an adorable Emily Mortimer) and brother are constantly inviting him over for breakfast or dinner, he gets invited to parties by his co-workers and even the new girl at work inexplicably has the hots for him!

The movie is missing a much needed edge. Lars is bat-shit crazy, but the only time this is truly apparent is when he tells his doctor (Patricia Clarkson, reserved to the point of banality) that it burns when people touch him. (And even that nugget of info is quickly forgotten about.) Otherwise Lars just ambles around like a bashful, pouty Napoleon Dynamite. The movie couldn’t even let a group of hardware store employees get in a quip about the sex doll more biting then “Does she have a sister?” Har, har… har. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Lars doesn’t even try to have sex with the sex doll! It’s a SEX DOLL!!!! How neutered can this movie get!

Besides that minor improbable innocence, there is also a strange irony to the way the movie plays out that I’m not sure director Craig Gillespie (who also has Mr. Woodcock on his short resume) or screenwriter Nancy Oliver (who penned a handful of Six Feet Under episodes) intended. Throughout the movie the audience is encouraged to laugh at how ridiculous Lars looks carting around and engaging this doll as if it were real. We are being told to point and laugh at him while the characters in the movie are doing everything to try to understand and comfort him. Unfortunately for the movie, after the fourth or fifth time, the joke is no longer funny and even makes the viewer feel kind of mean spirited for laughing when everyone else is compassionate.

You might think I’m being too hard on this trifle of a movie but I’m not sympathetic. Lars and Real Girl is a blatant attempt to mine the “cutsie indie flick” hysteria of late spurred on by the success of superior movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. However, where those movies retained some sort of basis in reality, Lars and the Real Girl is about as believable as a pair of fake breasts on a plastic sex doll.