Nov 29th

Nine in the morning, and I’d really like to get back to sleep. Debating whether or not to invite a cute girl to a movie this evening-seems like a no brainer, right?

This morning I watched Jodie Foster’s “The Beaver”, and the other day I finished “Terminator: Salvation” (or whatever it’s called) and I realized they both had Anton Yelchin in them. That’s pretty surprising. The only thing I knew the kid was in was the awesome Star Trek pic, I go out and get two random films from the library, and he’s in both.

Guess I should actually talk about Terminator first, I saw that one first. It kinda sucked. Playing it on my playstation 2 it skipped like crazy, but I didn’t care much at all. There just wasn’t anything to it; the movie feels like it was a twenty two minute show, as opposed to a feature length film.

And I thought John Connor was supposed to die in it? Did I hear wrong? I kept expecting him to die, and that the human-terminator hybrid would assume his identity to lead the resistance. Could I have made that up? No, probably I just misheard someone.

Instead! The terminator guy gives up his heart so John Connor can live, and not ONE person was like “hold up buddy, you don’t have to kill yourself!”

Well, the girl that loved the terminator was sort of against it, but she didn’t exactly put up much of a fight.

The CGI Arnold was actually really good; I was impressed on that front. Not that the skill of one computer generated image has any bearing on the story.

And that creepy little girl that hung out with Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) - nothing happened with her! Zip! I expected her to turn out to be another infiltration terminator unit, maybe with a broken voice modulator or something, and that’s why she never spoke. Nope, just a scared girl that gets to hand John Connor the big detonator at the finale. She couldn’t even press the button herself? At last that’d have been cool.

I wonder if part of the problem is that the original Terminator movie (the only one I’ve uh… mostly seen all of) is tense because you don’t think anything is going to stop that villain, the action building and building until finally it’s stopped, the end. It’s tense, frightening. In this film, you start off with giant flying ships and motorcycle robots, all of which get taken out by the humans, so right away the film has shifted from that tenseness to an action/war emphasis. Only at the end do we get that near unstoppable Terminator, but ten minutes of getting chased by the thing isn’t enough to build the kind of necessary dread. It’s like the film remembered what franchise they were shooting half way through, but it was too late to switch gears.

Yeah, that’s enough of that one.

The Beaver… it’s good, sure it’s good. I guess I have to applaud it for its true to life nature (beaver puppet notwithstanding). I imagine for me to sit back and think a movie is “great” I have to be tricked, manipulated into thinking “THERE! That’s the answer!” and I walk out of the theatre thinking I’ve got life all figured out.

(Alternatively, a particularly instructive movie, like, ACTUALLY instructive, would also be great, but for now I’ll assume that I’m fool enough to not be able to tell the difference between actual answers and getting my proper emotional strings plucked to think I’ve got the answers, because… how should I know the difference right away, if ever?)

But The Beaver’s principle statement is that life is messy. The father isn’t magically cured of his mental illness; the son still faces a daunting future. They all get a little closer together by the end, and I liked the concern on the son’s face as he accompanies his father to the hospital after the garage accident- this kid has spent the whole movie trying to get away from his father, but at that moment he’s scared for the guy. It’s a moment that strikes me as being off message in a more traditional film, but in a movie about life you can just capture that honest little moment without structuring the whole piece around that sole revelation.

I liked all the performances, I liked the story- Jodie Foster (the director) could probably have stood to cut more of Jodie Foster (the actor, but yes, the same person), leaving more focus on the father and son dynamic, but eh, whatever.

Man, I really want to go see the Muppet movie, but I’m supposed to see it with a friend of mine who really has a hard time making plans to do stuff. What else is playing? Hugo looks pretty cool, but I’m not sure I’m in the mood for that one. Arthur Christmas has been getting surprisingly good reviews even though, to me, it looks terrible. No, I’m not going to see that one.

I’ll figure it out.