Boogie Nights

Few movies are able to portray stupid people intelligently.  This movie does it though.  I don’t know if it was the acting, directing or writing, but it was brilliant.  My favorite scene?  Where “Dirk” has it out with his mom – classic.  Remember, “stupid screwed up people” does not mean “stupid screwed up movie”.  It even has a happy ending… why not?

Magnolia

Strange to say, but I think this movie needed to be longer. It was really long, but I think it needed another 20 minutes to really complete the stories. In case you wondered, this is another of those “intertwined lives” movies, a la ‘short cuts’ or ‘pulp fiction’. It was done really well – there was a lot of good acting, and the direction was first rate. I wish I could find better words of praise for this movie… it deserves some. I guess I’m just not sure what it was really about. Perhaps it was just about life & relationships & consequences, but isn’t almost every movie about that? Anyway, if you want to see an inventive, beautiful, smart and long movie, go see this.

 

Far From Heaven

If somebody had made a movie about homosexuality & interracial romance in 1958, it would have looked a lot like this one (it probably wouldn’t have been as good though). Everything from the dialog to the music is straight from upper-class proto-suburban 1950-something. It’s the kind of movie that transports the viewer to another place, time & civic sense. That’s what movies are for, aren’t they?