Get Low

Although we pretend not to care much of the time, most of us would like to know for sure what others really think of us. Not the things people say to our face, which are mostly polite and superficial. We wanna know the real things that real people -- especially the people we care about most -- think about us as we walk through life's journey.

And as much as we want to know what others think of us, sometimes we have things we want to say to others.Things we need to get off our chest. Things we feel we gotta say before we take that final breath.

Some of us do that in a poetic, soulful way.



Others, like Get Low's Felix Bush and me, do it in a more socially awkward, pensive manner.

Like Bush, played masterfully by Robert Duvall, there are things I'd like to say to some folks before I get put under. Unlike Bush, however, I'm not gonna hold a Alive Funeral Party to serve as the gathering place for me to vent all that stuff off my chest.

I'm much more likely to write it in a long blogpost. Where no one will ever read it anyway.

Film Scenes That Matter: Airplane!

Blue Valentine

Don't let the movie poster fool you.

This movie has little to do with romance, and even less to do with two hip 20-somethings posed to look like a Calvin Klein ad.

Blue Valentine details the disolution of Dean and Cindy's marriage. Built of a shakey foundation, the couple lose themeselves in the day-to-day stressors of life, and the insecurities that plague the best of relationships.

It's the sort of stuff that gives one The Danny Gut.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are fantastic as the leads, and carry the film with their incredible talents. The film flashes back and forth between their current relationship and the lives they lead at the time they first meet. The characters were quite different; in effect, then, Gosling and Williams each play two characters in the flick.

Blue Valentine is gritty, and often difficult to watch. It's also brilliant; the use of improvised dialogue and different film formats make this movie something special

Limitless

Limitless, the Neil Burger directed flick that probably went by the working title: "Bradley Cooper Cleans Up Real Good," gives the audience insight into what life might be like if we could master 100% of our brain capacity.

The results are that we become even more selfish, more dangerous, and more destructive. Who woulda figured?

Like some of Burger's other films, Limitless uses interesting visual tricks and imagery to tell the story and keep the audience focus. The acting, especially that by De Niro, seems flat by comparison. The ending attempts to be clever, but is predictable and annoying.

Even for someone like me whose percentage of brain control is in the single digits.