Movie Reviews

The following entries will be movie reviews. One will be an older film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the other relatively new, Revolutionary Road. Don't get your thongs bunched up about the spoilers. If you do, rent them both or read about them on IMDB before you bust a tear-nut.

Let's start with the new. Revolutionary Road came out in January 2009. Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio both star as a couple. It's based on a Richard Yates novel of the same name from 1962 and its set in the late 1950s/early 1960s, you know, when boozing and smoking while pregnant or at work or driving or around kids was cool (now its faux pas). Already, if you've been waiting for it to be made into a movie you're either dead or read the last page and figured it out yourself. If you did see it then I think even we can agree that this movie was grade A, 100%, spot-on, FUCKED UP. If anyone else saw this as a shock, you're not alone. Once I finished watching this depressing flick, I blew two lines of Prozac and popped in a Muppets Greatest Hits to cheer myself up.

Don't misinterpret me. I thought the acting was superb. The plot is where it makes me want to hang myself with a kite string. I'll start with the general outline and fill in with details later. Boy and Girl meet at party. Girl gets pregnant because Boy kept bragging about how good his timing is on pulling out. Dreams are dashed. Work and life stagnate for Boy and Girl who are now two kids deep. Girl wants to move family to Paris. Boy gets promotion at work. Paris plans are fucked. Girl is pregnant again. Marriage stagnates. Girl tries to perform abortion onself, fails. Roll Credits.

So Kate and Leo have a kid, rush a marriage, move into the suburbs, have another kid, Leo goes extramarital with a girl I'd characterize as a "practice girl" (the kind of girl whose body is fine but her face /personality has been stepped on with a golf shoe), Leo gets Kate pregnant and just when they're ready to move to Paris, Leo gets a promotion at work and decides he should stay for more money. This leaves Kate feeling disillusioned about life since he ditched Paris for a higher salary and a gym membership. Kate goes extramarital with her neighbor. Kate, pissed at Leo, performs a late term abortion on herself with some kind of squeezy apparatus and bleeds to death. Leo takes the kids to NYC and dies inside every day he sees a practice girl.

Fucking depressing. It should have been called Bummer Road or Late Term Avenue. I will say this, had the sex been more fulfilling for the stars of this movie (the sex scenes lasted a total of twenty seconds, that's two romps averaging ten seconds each) the movie may have been salvaged. I'd want to fuck a practice girl or my neighbor or perform an abortion if I couldn't get any good sex. Shit, the movie should have been called Minuteman Road.

One more point. Kate Winslet went from calm housewife to batshit insane in a snap. Great acting, yet the reality of such a transformation would scare the fuck out of me. Very, very crazy. Sadly, since the sex scenes were so short, one could never confirm the "crazy in the head, crazy in bed" law.

Check it out but don't end the night on it.

Indiana Jones is next.

Goddard Out.