That was a great movie. Really well done.

[fflo]

SPOILERS! SPOILERS about Match Point here!

Okay, what makes it especially good is its ambiguity about what's the good luck & what's the bad. Not just, or even primarily, in that toggling way that was in the book I loved as a child, Fortunately, which followed the same format as my friend LTM's book (I think it was) with the title Good Thing, Bad Thing, which is some kinda famous ancient Eastern wisdom story format, too (the son who breaks his leg & is said to've been unlucky, "Perhaps" sez the dad, then the broken leg keeps him out of the draft, so he's thought lucky, "Perhaps" sez the dad, etc.). It's all in what seems like good luck being bad luck in a way that only our protagonist knows (in his private horror).

And that's about a fantasy/horror karmic sort of no winning when you thwart justice, as no seed of justice = meaninglessness.

It's a new take on Woody's long-running theme about living with philosophy in an existentialist state. You almost gotta wonder about his own big sin (that we know of) & guilt about getting away with it.

It's really late, and I'm ge-zonked, so it's no surprise I've bolloxed talking of it with this not-even-half-assed posting. But it was a good movie. Fer shurr.

Comments

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I haven't had the chance to see Match Point yet, but I totally want to! But I'm here to talk about Me & You & Everyone We Know, which I finally saw this week and loved to little pieces.

I was amazed at how affectionate Miranda July was toward all her characters. It would be really easy to hate the art gallery owner or the guy who posted the signs on his window, but each of them wound up being... somehow redeemed by simultaneously owning their (for want of a better word) fetishes and recognizing the boundaries to which they can be taken without doing something really wrong, as a Todd Solondz character would.

My favorite sequence was the one with the goldfish in the plastic bag. So sad! So awfully, beautifully sad!

I also tried to explain the "Let's poop back and forth" scene to Bev, and wound up throwing up my hands, because there's no way to explain the perverse beauty of it unless you've seen the film. Which I plan to buy. I thought it was perfect. Best 2005 movie I've seen except for The Puffy Chair, which I think was only released in Maine.

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[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yeah! It may be the least judgmental cinematic gaze I think I've ever seen, at least within the subset of gazes that are looking so directly at all our sides, secret/dark included. People are struck by how much she allows her young characters to do or think or be, but it's true for her adults, too---it's almost flabbergastingly uncommon how plainly she turns her camera on these people.

I'd completely forgotten about the goldfish! Alas, poor fishy! Those intense love vibes for its doomed self! Such an off-the-wall thing to come up with. Comically strange, yet poignant thru-'n'-thru.

As for the pooping back and forth, there's another great juxtaposition: the topic that's about as unelevated as you can imagine---adult-child internet sex chat with a shit spin---that is somehow shiningly pure and gorgeous and lovely. The slow, smooth-faced way the kid slowly and calmly and matter-of-factly types and cuts&pastes his (our) end of the chat, too... I was dumbfoundedly absorbed and delighted. The "forever" part of the line seems important, too, to its fantasy appeal. (Hey, I think you should get---and could maybe pull off better than I could explaining to people who asked you about it---this shirt.)


I see The Puffy Chair did play Sundance. Does that mean it has a shot at DVDdom, ya think?

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[fflo.livejournal.com]

the code in the subject line there is supposed to be <>, of course

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