She has a real problem with promiscuity

I saw a handful of films in the past week. Mostly because, as the summer is winding down, I need to utilize all possible moments with mindless, unimportant crap, before law school crushes me and my gentle and adorable spirit.

First up, Water. Another Fox Searchlight winner, I was amazed that it was playing at our local dollar theater. Read this, about the making of the film. Death threats, secret location changes, and so on. The movie itself was very pretty, very sad and very good. The darker sides of religious fundamentalism come out to play, and it’s set against the rise of Gandhi in the late 1930s. Check it out if you can.

Pretty much as different from that as you can get, is John Tucker Must Die. Have you seen Mean Girls? Or How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days? Or Never Been Kissed? Or Down With Love? Or any other “pretend to like someone just to ultimately get revenge upon them, and whatever you do, DON’T actually fall in love with them – oh, crap” film? Well, then, you have the idea. This one could have been good, but where Mean Girls liked to be intelligent and catty, this just went for thong jokes, or volleyball-to-the-face jokes. And also the line “She likes early Elvis Costello, and listens to podcasts, and reads Dave Eggers. She’s deep.” And, sorry for the spoiler, but John Tucker doesn’t die, although it would’ve been great if the last scene was him getting hit by a bus.

After years of rubbish films, Woody Allen regained a lot of respect last year for Match Point, and his new film is called Scoop. He’s in it, again, and he’s the best part of it. He talks and talks and talks, and Scarlett Johansson does the same, less convincingly. It’s a fun film, there’s a “Boat of Death” and Hugh Jackman is very charming. The plot isn’t amazing, but it’s enjoyable, so check it if you can.

Finally, I caught last year’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was very day-glo, as you’d expect from Tim Burton. Depp was alright in it, he had a few good lines, but it was really unsatisfying. There was a lot of back story about Willy Wonka’s dad, which was really weird and didn’t fit very well. Overall, it was the equivalent of a fistful of fudge – cool for a little while, but ultimately thick and gross.