Movie Reviews In Brief: The Waitress in Yuma Ran With Scissors Once
3:10 To Yuma
“The best actor who’s never been nominated for an Academy Award!” read the sign at Hollywood Video, and I did a double-take. Really? Christian Bale’s never been nominated? And no, really, he hasn’t.
Christian’s had a lot to live down ever since appearing in American Psycho – a movie I know many love, but can’t see why. Gini and I watched that and judged it a piece of total, random crap – badly-written, badly-acted, and heavy on gore. There are people who will say that we didn’t get the subtext, but we did. We just didn’t find it appealing. (OMG HE MIGHT NOT HAVE EVEN DONE IT HOW KEWL)
But he’s appeared in such stellar stuff since then that I’ve forgiven him for that. And his appearance in this cinches it.
The tale is simple: We have a super-criminal on the loose, a Hannibal Lecter of the wild west, as played wonderfully by Russell Crowe. He’s captured by the Pinkertons, and Christian Bale’s one-legged, not-particularly-effective-but-noble farmer winds up getting roped into escort the super-criminal to the 3:10 train to Yuma, where the super-criminal will be brought to be hung.
A lot of the reviews said this movie was an hour too long, but I didn’t feel it; the tension was there throughout. They actually made a Western feel like an action movie, which isn’t something that’s done often or well. And the ending, which has a bizarre moral complexity that’s just satisfying, works all too well.
I liked this a lot more than I had planned to. Which was good. Christian Bale, you keep goin’.
Running With Scissors
I adored the book this was made from, but I couldn’t get more than halfway through the movie. The filmmakers made a drastic error in adapting the book:
They thought the mother was important.
See, “Running with Scissors” is the memoir of a strangely egomaniacal, gay-from-the-beginning kid who’s raised in a horrible house. His mother, who is a crazy Sylvia Plath-style writer without the Sylvia Plath chops, convinces him that they’re all Very Special And Talented People, then hands legal guardian ship of him off to his therapist because she can’t be bothered to raise him. And her therapist is even crazier.
The book was touching because you saw everything through his eyes – the way he believed in his own greatness, even as the evidence contradicted it. The way he tried to make the absurd normal. The discomfort with the house.
But the movie focused on not the kid, but the mom and her awful, terrible failings, and we’ve seen the Lame Mom a zillion times before. Everything that made the book as quirky and memorable, all the little touches, were erased to make this a drama that focused on the story arc of the mom, which just failed.
After half an hour, I said to Gini, “Can we turn this off?”
She said, as she usually does, “No. It might get better.”
Fifteen minutes later, she said, “It’s lost me,” and we switched over. A shame.
Once
My friend Nate loves this movie. So do a lot of other people. They love it so much that I tried to get through it twice.
It’s a simple story, and by “simple” I mean, “The characters don’t even have names.” A girl falls in love with a boy who plays guitar, they have a romance, stuff happens. And along the way, they sing ballads about life and stuff.
I was bored to tears. Call me a flint-hearted monster, call me a non-fan of folk music (which, you know, I am), call me too addicted to action spectaculars, but the characters didn’t catch my attention and their love story was so simple that there was nothing to keep me there.
Once again (and this was the same night as Running with Scissors), we turned it off halfway through. It wasn’t bad, but we found our attention drifting all the same.
Later on, on another DVD, the trailer for Once revealed that the girl was married and they had to decide what to do.
“Does that make it any more interesting?” I asked.
“I still don’t care,” Gini said. I didn’t either. And I feel bad, because like The Big Lebowski, I fear that I’m not getting something. The adoration of so many can’t mean that it’s without merit. Right?
Or maybe it’s just not that good. Ya never know.
Waitress
A strangely charming comedy about a waitress, trapped in a bad marriage and newly pregnant, who starts up an affair with her gynecologist. I was going to see this because of Nathan Fillion, of course, but it was worthwhile, if a bit creepy.
Thing is, the movie is good all the way through – the script is charming, the actors are perfect, and the characters are memorable. Heck, the narrative hook of the lead character expressing all of her frustrations by baking different pies works wonderfully because all of her pies look delicious. And it’s a big shame that the person who made all of this was brutally murdered before she could create even bigger films.
But – and ( read no further unless you want some mild spoilage! )
I bought it, because I do believe. But the cynic in me bought it just barely.
It’s still adorable. And I still found it heartwarming. But the deep-down messages are a little whacky.
Still, I would have liked to see more from Adrienne Shelley. And now I won’t. That fucker.
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