- Show me love
Written and directed by Lukas Moodyson, I really enjoyed this one. Set in Åmål, a small insignificant Swedish town where nothing ever happens.
To Elin’s disgust by the time they get to hear of current trends they are already “out,” like raves. You grow up, meet someone, get married and that’s about as exciting a life as you can expect. Elin refuses to ever accept this and keeps saying that she is going to do all sorts of outrageous things and she even tries to get high on a stomachache remedy.
For Agnes things are very different. Despite having moved into the area around 18 months ago she still has no real friends and feels she doesn’t fit in. Her main driving force is her burning love for Elin and one of the touching early moments involves her writing ELINELIN during a class and then scribbling it over with pencil when she believes a classmate saw her write it - there was just something about the light off the pencil’s marking on the paper.
Wonderfully the film doesn’t stick to unrequited love but instead deals with having the courage to admit your true self and your own feelings rather than just fitting in. We see this as Elin begins to allow herself her growing feelings for Agnes. The ending is very inspiring and this is probably one of the few films where you see boys arguing over who’s is smallest or thinnest (sadly we are talking cellular phones here). The final line is quite cool too: “Hi. This is my new girlfriend Agnes. Excuse us we’re just going off to fuck." (or close enough) when the two emerge from a toilet after everyone seems to believe/assume Elin is with a new boyfriend. Gobsmacked? Of course they are.
- Being John Malkovich
- Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
- Holy Smoke
- Erin Brockovich
- The Hurricane
- Scream 3
A film which had much promise but ultimately falls short. It still remained enjoyable.
- Pokémon the First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back
Pikachu's Vacation either tries to introduce you to various pokemon (plus the new one) (if you're a parent who's never seen any of the TV series) or perhaps shows how theme parks lose their appeal once they get too popular.
Mewtwo Strikes Back has some of the problems of the X-Files movie in that it too is a film that has to fit in with an ongoing TV series. The week I in which saw the film, Brock left the TV series and was replaced by Tracy while Ash caught {name} which is presumably some time after this film.
- American Psycho
Beginning with the red drops of sauce on to the plate of a Nouvelle Cuisine restaurant, the stylish look of the film is maintained for the full running time. We see Patrick Bateman's (Christian Bale, occasionally spookily looking like Tom Cruise, or at least Tom Cruise in “Eyes Wide Shut”) attempts to 'fit in' with his high-powered colleagues by obsessing over suits, business cards and being able to get a reservation at a good restuarant.
To relax, of course, he kills people - mainly outcasts: the homeless, prostitutes and then on to those who can get better reservations or have better business cards. Or does he? Is his real psychosis manifested in his conviction that he has committed these terrible acts or did he truly kill all those he mentioned in his confession to his lawyer's answering machine. Maybe he just wished he could have done those things rather than just being a wannabe. We really see the depths of his condition when his secretary discovers his journal in his office which he has decorated with line drawings of all sorts of grisly acts. Even his descriptions of the music he likes seem without passion yet filled with an obsession with sounding well-informed. The book had these as separate chapters but here he delivers these speeches while about to kill Paul Allen or to other people who really don't care. He seems to feel a need to outdo or impress in order to feel that he in some way fits in. A scathing review of 80s greed on Wall Street and elsewhere.
- Boys Don’t Cry
Perhaps, as Mewtwo decided, the circumstances of your birth are irrelevant, it's what you do with the gift of life that is important. Here, Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) has only ever felt himself to be male despite being female by birth. He is on the slow road to being given a sex-change operation but as he says, “by that time, I'll be an old man.” Unfortunately, Brandon has a tendency to get into trouble with the law, most recently with Grand Theft Auto (not the damned computer game, either). Brandon has lived all his life in Lincoln, Nebraksa but after meeting a girl in a bar he ends up going with her friends to Falls City after narrowing escaping a fight. There he finds Lana in whom he finds some degree of happiness for a change. Things start looking up until after a brush with the law due to speeding leads to his earlier history being discovered when they run his identity number through the computer system and they put this Teena Brandon in the jail. At this point his current female state is discovered but despite this Lana still wants to get Brandon out.
Brandon knows who he should be and tries to live his life that way which should give anyone hope. The end is tragic reminds us that prejudice and lack of understanding or unwillingness to even try is often our undoing.
- Circus
- Kevin and Perry Go Large
- Galaxy Quest
![[BACK]](imgs/back.png)