April 18 – Winter’s Bone (2010)

How far does one decision go? Can one flap of a butterfly wing cause a hurricane on the other side of the world? There’s a 2004 sci-fi film called Butterfly Effect too that deals with this same question. But the movie for today is far from being sci-fi, but something realistic.

The movie I picked for today is the 2010 drama Winter’s Bone, adapted from the novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell. It won Grand Jury Prize in the 2010 Sundance Festival and received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. It stars the lovely Jennifer Lawrence playing the lead character Ree. The film, set in the rural rocky mountains of Missouri, follows the story of Ree as she is left to take care of the family after her ex-drug dealing father went missing. She is trying to find him to avoid the foreclosure of their house. Her search forces her to embark on a journey to deal with the town’s crime lords to find clues of her father’s whereabouts, unsure if she’d ever find him.

April 17 – Lost and Delirious (2001)

A conservative girl goes to an all-girls boarding school and becomes roommates with two lesbian lovers. There’s bound to be drama there. Honestly, being in a boarding school full of beautiful ladies, I’d be crazy not to go lesbian. Well I can dream right?

Usually when I feel down from my sad loveless existence, I look to sad romantic movies to reassure myself that some people have it worse. The movie I picked for today is the 2001 drama Lost and Delirious, adapted from the novel 1993 novel Wives of Bath by Susan Swan. Remember those pretty girls I was talking about? Mischa Barton plays Mary, the conservative new girl who’s experiencing the world alone for the first time. I’ve been a big fan of her ever since I was younger. I fell in love watching her play the beautiful sophisticated Marissa Cooper in The OC. She surely has my vote as the most beautiful TV high-school student of all time. Jessica Pare plays Tori, the well-brought up confused who’s experiencing with her sexuality. You might have seen her in the hit show Mad Men as Don Draper’s wife. Piper Perabo plays Paulie, the eccentric Shakespeare-quoting girl who’s madly in love with Tori. The conflict starts when Tori’s sister sees them together in bed. Fearful of what her parents and other would say, Tori breaks it off with Paulie. Then it all went downhill from there.

April 12 – Clueless (1995)

I’m a big fan of teen movies and tv shows. I’ve always been curious about how teens behave in different eras like from the 50’s to the 90’s. I like seeing how culture evolves along with ever changing fashion, dating methods, and teenage jargon. Let me share my observation for each era. I think the 50’s was the start of good teen movies much like today. I think it has to do with the after-war culture. Teen stories of this era get to be more liberated and rebellious. One major reason also was the downfall of the Motion Picture Code during the mid-50’s. Try to check out my favorite 50’s teen movie, Rebel Without A Cause (1955) starring James Dean. I think the 60’s kids started to get a little crazy with the FM radio becoming popular. All the cool kids would just cruise around in their cars windows down blasting the radio and hang out in parking lots. Notable movies are American Graffiti (1973) and Animal House (1978). The 70’s got a little bit chill thanks to the hippie generation. They just listen to good music and smoke weed all the time. Notable movies are Dazed and Confused (1993) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). The 80’s teen movies started to get very similar to the teen movies of today. John Hughes was the king of this era. My favorite time for teen movies indeed. Now this observation is very narrow and based simply on movies. I’m not really sure if this was the culture of the time.

The movie for today, Clueless, was set in the 90’s starring Alicia Silverstone. What ever happened to her? I don’t see her around doing movies anymore. However she remains in my memory as my childhood Batgirl. The movie follows the story of Cher (Silverstone), a spoiled rich girl as she soon realizes that the world does not revolve around her. She is considered the queen of a Beverly Hills high school (Beverly Hills, 90210 movie much?) Her status is threatened when the new girl she places under her wing is becoming well-liked. This story sounds familiar. It’s like Mean Girls in the 90’s! The main difference between the two was the perspective. Think Mean Girls in Regina George’s point of view.

March 29 – The Perks of Being A Wallflower (2012)

“We accept the love we think we deserve.” It’s probably the most remembered quote in this story. The single explanation the story gives as to why good people always go for bad people. My explanation: bad people are just more interesting. But that’s totally unrelated to the story.

I guess you noticed by now that I have thing for coming-of-age flicks. I’m thinking of starting this new trend. Every Friday, I plan on watching well-recognized movies. Movies that everyone has probably watched or heard of that I have not seen. This movie was pretty talked about last year, that’s why I picked the 2012 film The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The book was pretty talked about already even before the movie was ever conceptualized. Unfortunately, I have not read the book so I don’t know which version is better. I don’t know if there are any differences. If you manage to read this, I guess you can tell me the differences when we get the chance. The film follows the story of how shy and unpopular Charlie goes through freshman year of high school. We watch as he overcomes the barrier of making friends and fight the demons that have been haunting him for years. It stars Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, and Logan Lerman as Charlie.

March 28 – It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010)

“If you’re not busy being born, then you’re busy dying.” First time I heard of this line was when Morgan Freeman said it in the Shawshank Redemption. The line pretty much sums up the entire film. Ironically, it was said in the movie too, twice to be exact. For someone who claims to listen to a lot of music, I never knew it was the lyrics to a song. Apparently, it’s a Bob Dylan song as mentioned in the movie. I guess we learn something new everyday. Cut me some slack, I was born in the 90’s!

The movie I picked for today is a 2010 drama film called It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. It was adapted from a 2006 novel with the same title by Ned Vizzini. It follows the story of a 16-year old depressed outcast, Craig, who admits himself to a psychiatric ward. In there he meets two friends, a teenage girl named Noelle and a middle-aged man named Bobby, who changes his outlook on life. Craig is played by the relatively unknown actor, Keir Gilchrist. Michael Cera would have played the awkward kid role better, but he showed different dimensions of the character in this film that Michael Cera wouldn’t have been able to pull off. Noelle was played by the beautiful Emma Roberts, and surprisingly, Bobby was played by Zach Galifianakis. Yep you saw it right. Who knew this guy had it in him to play a relatively serious role, apart from his usual comedic characters.

March 27 – Submarine (2010)

For today’s post, I still stuck with the coming-of-age theme. I watched this movie with a friend of mine after helping me pick what movie to watch for the day. Thanks you know who you are! This time the main character is a little older than Sam in Moonrise Kingdom (check my previous post), he’s 15. This coming-of-age film mostly deals with extreme topics from the hardships of growing up, love, to divorce.

The movie I watched today was a 2010 British indie film called Submarine by Richard Ayoade. I read that this movie was his directorial debut so I didn’t know what to expect. It deals with the story of 15-year old student Oliver Tate set in the 80’s. Throughout the movie, we see his struggles fitting in with his schoolmates, learning the meaning of love, and being caught up in the middle of his parents’ divorce. From the seems of it, the movie could have possibly come from a novel. The story is told in 3 main parts with a prologue and epilogue, so I decided to split this post into parts as well.

The prologue played during the first few minutes of the movie. In here, we learn about what Oliver was like. We learn from the get-go that he has troubles fitting in with the rest of his classmates because of his awkwardness. I think we all want the feeling of belonging and having friends. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who purposely enjoys rejecting the notion of having friends. Everyone needs friends unless you’re crazy. I still remember the nerve-racking feeling of stepping in a new school. During the 3rd grade, I shifted to a new school and I didn’t know anyone. Being a naturally shy and quiet person, it was very hard for me to fit in. I just remembered one friend who offered me cookies and took the time to talk to me. I guess he helped me fit in, by that simple act. I’m not even sure he was aware of what he did (being 3rd graders), but I’m still very thankful for that moment. My first day in college went smoother, because I was older and the orientation really made sure that people interact. I’m still generally awkward and shy though.

March 26 – Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Okay maybe my first entry was a little too risque. I decided to tone it down with my next movie, but still on theme of adolescence. It deals with  sweeter topics: love and growing up.

We’re all mesmerized by the thought of love. But what does it even mean to be in love? I don’t think anyone can really define it, aside from the obvious scientific explanations. We’ve got the best minds and technology of the time, and no one can give a singular explanation. I can’t blame them though, I think it’s really hard to find a way to measure love.  Is love simply a feeling or is it defined by the choices we make? As a psychology major, I have had the opportunity to be exposed to different theories on love. Some psychologists defined it as the amount of time you engage in eye contact with another person. As if saying that there is a minimum duration of eye contact to qualify being in love. I understand where they’re coming from and all that, but I can assure you that if I play a staring game with someone for a period of time, it does not mean that I’m gonna fall in love with the person. It’s not that simple, no one ever said it was.

I think I’m getting off-topic with my intro there. Anyways, the movie I picked for today was done by one of my favorite director/screenwriter, Wes Anderson. I’ve become a fan of Wes Anderson ever since I watched Rushmore (1998) starring Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray. Those two are probably in all of his films. The final scene of that movie was simply amazing with “Ooh La La” by The Faces playing in the background. There’s just something about his movies that leave a feeling of enchantment to me. He has the power of capturing emotion without the use of dialogue of background music. I don’t know how he does it, but he does it so well. He focuses on coming-of-age type of films, something I really like. Oh and if you’ve ever come across one of his movies, you gotta love the wide-angle tracking shots. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch some of his movies!

As seen from the movie poster, this movie is called Moonrise Kingdom, released only last year and received an Academy Award nomination. The poster kinda gives a vintage feel to it. His movies tend to be like that. It deals with the story of 12-year old orphan Sam and his experiences with growing up and love. The setting was in the 60’s during one boy scout summer camp of his. The whole movie was shrouded with the theme of innocence. As we follow his adventures throughout the entire movie, it can’t help but leave us with a sense of jubilation.

March 25 – Kids (1995)

Do kids grow up too fast nowadays?

One year away from graduating college, I don’t feel any different from when I was in high school. Aside from my body, I don’t think I have gone through any form of change. And yet as a 19 year old, the world is calling me an adult. What does being an adult even mean? Most dictionaries just give a physical definition. Someone 18 and over, sexual maturity, puberty, reproductive age blah blah and all that jazz. But we all know it’s more than that. I guess one can say that a 16-year old of today is very different than the 16-year old of generations ago. So I don’t know if the definition is as static as it should be, because I do think that children nowadays grow up faster than their parents did. Seeing as we’re not cavemen, I decided to do a little Google search of the word “adult.” It just gave me porn sites. Wow, I wonder how many curious kids like me who didn’t know any better and clicked on those links. How many kids have been made into adults from that simple search? See this is what I’m talking about growing up too fast, because we’re just exposed to more things than generations before.

For my first entry, I wanted to find a movie that tackled this big issue. And Larry Clark goes extreme in answering this question, bringing us the very controversial 1995 indie film “Kids“. It’s about a day in the life of New York teenagers who don’t think twice engaging in sex, drugs, and alcohol. And by teenagers, the movie meant under-18 kids.  Oh and to add authenticity to the movie, I’m pretty sure all the actors were underaged to fit their characters. Overall, the premise looks like it was taken out of an Irvine Welsh novel. Here is a movie poster: