Lars and the Real Girl 12/18/07

Lars and the Real Girl, is a very rare and special film. It is undefinable as a drama or a comedy. It's about something very serious, and yet has many laughs. It has a universal theme and yet I can't think of any specific audience this movie would be made for. It's strange, sweet, and unpredictable. Above all it is compassionate and features a cast of nice, kind, and empathetic people. This is one of the most original movies of the year.
It stars Ryan Gosling as Lars, a painfully shy man who lives in the garage behind his brother's house, has no friends, and flinches at the idea of people touching him. Lars has a problem with isolation, and it feeds upon itself. He can't even bring himself to attend dinner with his brother and his wife (Emily Mortimer). The alienation runs deep.
To fix his problem, Lars creates an imaginary friend. Well, sort of. He orders a sex doll over the internet, names it Bianca, and introduces her to people as his girlfriend, who happens to be a paraplegic missionary. His brother and sister in law are horrified. Lars is having delusions about what is real and what is not.
This is a serious edgy issue. There are not many movies that can bring this sort of problem up and create laughs, not to mention sympathetic charachters. But this movie does both and how it does it merits alot of praise. First of all there is Ryan Gosling, who although spends the entire movie talking to a doll, never seems to act truly crazy. He is soft spoken and shy. This type of delusion can scare people, but Gosling is completely non-threatening. Secondly, the story itself is deeply knowledgeable about this sort of problem. I, myself, am personally aware of it. I looked upon this movie with a judging eye, to see if it would get the details correct. The direction, writing, and acting are all perfect. There are two scenes especially, one at a party, the other at a bowling alley, that convinced me that the makers knew what they were doing. Take a look at the body language and editing. These moments may be frivolous to normal people, but they are very important to Lars. 
The way the town reacts to Lars' situation provides much of the creativity in this movie. There is a sympathy and understanding that makes the picture endearing in these scenes. Also the people are very smart and they take advantage of the delusion in order to help Lars. (Sometimes the lengths the town goes to strecthes plausibility, but what the hell) Lastly, Emily Mortimer's performance is the anchor of the movie. I loved her charachter and how good she was. I don't believe there is a single bad person in this film. It is about a man who is fighting his own loneliness. It is a very quiet, rare, and special indeed.

Good Night and Good Luck 11/05/05

Edward R. Murrow was a newsman for CBS during the early fifties when a senator named Josephy McCarthy was trying suspected communists for being communists and convicting them with false testimony and hear say evidence. When most reporters ignored the McCarthy hearings for fear of being suspected, Murrow after a while stood up. He was the first, and that is why this first rate movie was made about him. I found the movie to be in a version like the 1975 film "All the President's Men," mostly because it skirted melodrama, and was about men in smoke-filled rooms working and talking seriously for a change. There is a tension in the air, but that is because of the seriousness of the situation. Nothing is exploited for gratuitous value, even McCarthy himself is shown as himself, pasted from Newsreels shown at the time. A movie like this is rare, because most studios today don't think that the American attention span is long enough to focus on something seriously for more than an hour and a half. If this movie becomes popular it will be of much help to us all. It will prove that Americans are willing to pay to hear a serious discussion, and if producers can catch that idea than maybe instead of the shouting debates that we now have on the 24-hour news networks, we may get lengthy and educating debates that actually look into the issues instead of just glancing at them. In a paraphrase of Murrow, this may be wrong, but what harm can it do. In the opinion of this critic, I hope we get more enlightening movies like these made. We as a people can help this by making them profitable to make. That's all. Good Night, and Good Luck.