Mary and Max

Oh my I love this movie.

There's Mary (Toni Collette) and Max (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and there's all the silly people that surround them that don't quite understand.

Mary is a 9 year old girl living in Australia and Max is a man with aspergers living in New York City. And he does not like it when the woman from his weight-loss class makes moves on him. Or cigarette butts. One day Mary decides that she wants to be someone's pen pal and she randomly picks Max's name out of the phone book. Most of the film is narrated by the two of them and their letters to each other.

Mary's (Collette) mother is an alcoholic and her father is physically present but emotionally absent, and also obsessed with taxidermy (as all good absent fathers should be). Mary really likes to eat sweetened condensed milk which is disgusting and adorable, but mostly disgusting. Max (Hoffman) really likes chocolate bars. Mary and Max both are obsessed with a children's television show that involves little troll like dolls (and Max has collected all of them). Mary has a splotch on her face that she is self-conscious of, and Max is habitually overweight. They are, a match made in heaven.

They write to each other for years. And live their lives thousands of miles away from each other, but also together. Max has been through a lot, in and out of hospitals, attempting suicide, and confused about his disability. Mary is going through a lot always. But for awhile things fly right for her. She gets rid of her splotch with surgery, gets married to the boy next door, and writes a best-selling novel about aspergers and Max.

However, Max hates the book, and feels betrayed by Mary, her husband turns out to be gay, and she realizes the splotch was a part of her that she loved and can never retrieve again. Basically shits looking pretty bleak for Mary. She becomes an alcoholic (just like her mother, drinking cooking sherry which is the saddest drink of choice alcoholic or non-alcoholic). And she plays with the idea of suicide. But just when she's about to kick the bucket (literally/figuratively) she gets some mail from Max, who hasn't written in years. He forgives her, and sends all his trolls as a sign of solidarity, also he won the lottery.

Hoffman and Collette do the voices in a very sincere manner. They are so innocent in the tenor of their voices. Every time they speak it's soft, kind, and worried. You can hear how much life has beaten them up, and how much they need each other. When Max and Mary finally meet in real life I suggest preparing yourself for some real tears. Real talk, real tears.

Adam Elliot's script (he's also the director) is written with tenderness and a true understanding of the problems faced by not only by people with aspbergers but children who have been neglected and bullied. Not only is the plot adorable, the film is in fucking CLAYMATION. They couldn't have made it cuter, and sweeter if they tried. I love it when I can see the fingerprints in claymation figures. I love claymation, and it was done so well in this film. It's such a painstaking process (taking hours to shoot seconds of film) and it's so worth whenever it's done well.

Take a look and let me know your thoughts.


~Alena Ivanov


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Heathers

A really fun drinking game to play while watching Heathers is to take a drink anytime anyone says Heather and a shot anytime anyone dies. And by really fun, I mean really dangerous. And by really dangerous I mean only play this game with an EMT nearby. And by EMT I mean your friend Adam, who will knock on the bathroom door while you're vomiting and say repeatedly "I'm schcoming in, I don't sink you're sokay 'Lena"

With that aside let's talk about Heathers. This is a movie made in the 80's starring Winona Ryder playing a girl named....Veronica? Veronica is a member of a clique in her high school called the Heathers because they are all named Heather except for Veronica. The leader of the Heathers, Heather (Kim Walker) is pretty relentless. She gives mean notes to sad girls, she asks shallow newspaper poll questions, asks people to fuck her gently with a chainsaw, and she only talks to people she thinks are worth her time. Standard high school asshole shit. Veronica kind of accidentally joined the group and doesn't really want to be a part of it.

I think of this like the film 'Mean Girls' but it's darker and better and great. What I like about this is that I always thought that Mean Girls' esque movies were kind of bullshit. I don't know what high school all these screenwriters went to, but when I went to school there was never such a clear divide between who was cool and who was not, not everyone had their own clique, people just sort of chilled with whomever they felt like (and whomever had weed). Heathers takes those cliches about high school and attacks them in such a veracious and ridiculous way it sort of feels like it's making fun of itself sometimes.

Veronica (Ryder) meets Christian Slater and his eyebrows in the cafeteria. Promptly after their meeting Christian Slater pulls out a gun a shoots blanks in some football chodes faces. And Veronica OBVIOUSLY falls in love with him. Because what in God's name is more attractive then pretend shooting people with a real gun? The answer is nothing.

So I know I sort of gave a little bit away by saying you take a shot when someone dies, but I don't want to give too much away because this movies has surprises you probably should discover on your own time. Needless to say Slater doesn't end up as stable as he appeared originally. And Veronica doesn't end up as strong as she originally seemed earlier.

There are a lot of goofy shots, great dream sequences, and generally campy feeling to the direction. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Again this is Mean Girls but better. Watch it and let me know how you feel in the comments below.

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~Alena Ivanov

Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus

Michael Cera is so lovably punchable that I just want to punch him. And I won't say much about his acting because he always plays a slightly different version of himself. He plays Jamie, a young man in Chile in search of some cactus highs. He doesn't care much about learning about Chile. He doesn't seem to care much about his companions (the director's brothers and Crystal Fairy herself) other than to use them to help find his precious cactus.

Jamie (Cera) has fallen into a malaise that I've seen a lot in my peers. He's searching for something (but I don't think it's the cactus) and he's not sure what it is (it's probably not the cactus) so instead of trying to find it (again not the cactus) he attempts to chase whatever momentary pleasure he can get by looking for a cactus.

 Jamie sports a sort of male self-confidence that is too common to be funny, purporting knowledge of things he does not fully understand as if he is some sort of authority on the subject, "Is this Chilean cocaine? It goes really smooth. Although this pot is really heady." In a drunken/cocaine ridden frenzy he invites Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffman), another American tourist, to join the band of merry cactus comrades. And Crystal is just the type that would take you up on that offer any day of the week.

I want to say this and make it perfectly clear, Jamie is a colossal asshole, he knows nothing of how to treat other people. He even pushes his car seat into someone's legs so that he can go to sleep easier on the trip that they are taking primarily for him. These are basic rules of society we have all learned about being polite. I felt like calling his mother and letting her know what a dick her son turned out to be. And Crystal (Hoffman) she just isn't an asshole at all.

Gaby Hoffman really did a number on portraying this woman. She played her with a sort of innocent sincerity that I'm not sure another actress could pull off. Crystal is so naively spiritual about the world you know that something awful had to have happened to her. When someone wants so much for the Earth to be a force of everlasting protection you start to wonder what the people on the Earth did for them to need that so much. She tries so hard to win Jamie over, and in the end she sort of does.

Although Jamie acts like a hippie, he really isn't. He's just a cynical kid who is trying to justify his drug habit with hippie literature. He generally doesn't know what he is talking about, and doesn't care much about people. Crystal is a real hippie, generally doesn't know what she's talking about (but believes it) and cares about everyone. They clash ostensibly. But Jamie doesn't want to be mean, and I don't think he means to be mean, he understands near the end how precious Crystal has been to the group. She has held everyone together, kept things from becoming stilted, taken awkward things (being naked in a hotel room) and made them normal. That is her strong suit, making the strange seem normal.

Silva's style is slow moving, but it feels like real life. If I were to take a trip with some friends in Chile to find a hallucinogenic cactus, I imagine the road trip would feel a lot like this film did. Kind of hot, slow moving, awkward, and occasionally funny. I enjoyed watching the characters trip, and I liked that he just let us watch the whole thing (like an objective observer) instead of trying to make us experience their high in a first person sort of way. The whole thing felt like being a fly on the wall at a trip we weren't invited on.

In the end, we inevitably get high and learn about Crystal's damage (and it is brutal). Hoffman is so matter of fact in the way she reveals the information, and the emotion builds so naturally it feels incredibly real. Everyone reacts to Crystal's pain, because in the end, you don't feel like Crystal is someone that deserves pain, even Jamie knows that Crystal doesn't deserve pain. All she gives out is love, and all that she should get back is love. The film is heartbreaking, funny, and real. Give it a watch if you can and let me know how you feel about it in the comments.


~Alena Ivanov


Filmtered Content

Detachment

Detachment

 This is a 2011 film directed by Tony Kaye, acted by Adrien Brody, and available on Netflix. Available on Netflix you say? Yes, I suggest watching it when you can because it's pretty rad. It's also depressing as shit. It's radpressing.

 Adrien Brody plays a substitute teacher (Henry) who works primarily in the inner city. It sounds like a standard white guy goes to inner-city and saves all the black kids from their culture kind of film, but it isn't like that at all. What I like about it most is that he doesn't really save anyone (he sort of saves a prostitute I guess). But, the students, not so much.

 The film is about a stark reality, and in that stark reality not many people get "saved". The students aren't fleshed out for the most part, but I don't think they need to be so much. The movie is about how Henry (Brody) views them and I don't think he's that "attached" to them. He plays a man who has been hurt a lot, and who doesn't want to feel much.

 He has a complicated relationship with his grandfather (his only living relative) and has a very young prostitute living with whom he takes care of. Other than that he doesn't really have anyone. He goes on a semi-date with a fellow teacher but it doesn't go far. He isn't a very talkative date.

 Some problems get fixed in the end. Others don't. I like that there are loose ends. I prefer a messily wrapped movie to a neatly wrapped one any day. Although you definitely have to be in a mood to watch this, and the mood is preferably not too sad, the movie will get you there without any extra help from your psyche.

 There are some over the top moments, one with Lucy Liu sticks out pretty memorably. Also Henry throws several desks at one point,well he throws one and then sort of topples the others in an awkward rage. I find a sort of purposeful approach to the over the topness.

 If you've ever felt like shit (I assume everyone has) you sort of assume that everything is shit, and then inevitably everything becomes shit. Henry isn't happy, and he sees the shitty bits in life and amplifies them in his mind, until he's sort of living in a shit tornado of sorts.

 Brody does a great job in this film (like most of his work). Almost every time the camera was on him you could see him feeling something. Even the titled feeling of detachment played well on his features. You could see it in his eyes, his cheeks, his body. I joke that even Brody's nose acts well in most of his film. Take special note of his nose in this one. His nose deserves an Oscar.

 This movie made me hold my breath and let it out slowly a lot, just to keep from being overwhelmed. It has its flaws ( a talented and under-utilized cast would be a major one) but it did what it needed to do for me. Beautiful chalkboard images, and visceral cut scenes made me feel very much what I assume the director intended. It played on the screen like a poem, flashes of images with little explanation and a lot of emotion.

 Watch it if you have the time, and comment what you thought of it below!

 ~Alena Ivanov

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