Mysterious Skin
When I saw Mysterious Skin, I actually thought it would be more UFO-related than it was.
I knew it would be about children who were sexually abused, so I was prepared for it being upsetting. It was, but it was also fascinating and touching. I also have to say that I appreciated the fact that unlike in many other movies and books, it wasn’t girls who were abused.
I’m not sure what to say about this movie. It’s really good and interesting, but also sad. Despite that, you might say that it had a hopeful ending.
Perhaps I should mention something about the plot first. The main character is Neil, a little boy who is the son of a single mother. She has many different boyfriends, and from an early age Neil discovers that his mother’s grown up boyfriends turn him on. Naturally not in the way that he’d like to have a relationship with them, but he does like to watch his mother having sex with them.
One day he meets a man who is considerably more interested in him than other grown men usually are. It’s his baseball coach. Back in those days – the 1980’s – parents weren’t as suspicious of that sort of thing as they are today, so Neil’s mother is just grateful that there’s a male role model willing to take an interest in her son.
You realize early on that there’s something not quite right about this relationship. I read that the boys playing two of the characters as children, never found out the truth about what the movie was really about. They were told it was about alien abduction. In one particular scene I don’t know how they managed to keep up the deception.
Neil has a best friend/faghag, Wendy, who is a willing participant in all his stunts, until she leaves for New York to get a better and more interesting life. It’s typical for this movie that despite the fact that Wendy ‘only’ gets to be a waitress, she’s not the one who ends up being abused. She does well for herself.
They have another friend, Eric, who is clearly gay, but who hasn’t been sexually assaulted as a child, so he isn’t as disturbed as Neil. When Neil (who Eric is in love with) goes off to New York to visit Wendy, Eric meets a new guy, Brian, who seems to be completely asexual. They end up being friends, but Eric soon realizes that his new friend is trying to find out what happened to him as a child. He has mysterious memory lapses and sometimes he suffers inexplicable nosebleeds. It turns out that the two boys – Neil and Brian – have something in common.
I won’t tell you how the movie ends, but I do think the ending isn’t as unhappy as it might be, considering the fact that it’s about little boys being sexually abused, a young man selling sex to older men and contains a gay rape scene. I have to warn you about that one though. It very disturbing and upsetting.
I’d like to mention a minor character. During the course of his search, Brian runs into a woman who thinks she’s been abducted by aliens. Avalyn Friesen. She’s a really tragic character, who can come across as comical, but I feel dreadfully sorry for her. You soon get the impression that she’s been sexually abused herself, as a child, and that she can’t handle it, and has made up farfetched explanations to all the things that don’t add up in her memories. The actress does a great job, I think.
So do all the actors. They’ve appeared in many other tv series and movies before. Neil is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, from Third Rock from the Sun. Wendy (as a grownup) is played by Michelle Trachtenberg, from Harriet, the Spy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The woman who plays the tragic Avalyn has been in 24, among other things.
I can really recommend this movie, but bear in mind that there are some upsetting scenes in it.
Monsoon Wedding
Monsoon Wedding is an Indian Movie from 2001. When I saw it, I’d heard a bit about it and I was pretty sure I was going to like it. I wasn’t disappointed. It wasn’t just the plot, which was interesting enough, or even the cast – vivid, engaging characters. I think one reason I loved this movie was the colors, the vast milling crowds in the background and all the aspects of culture, like architecture, religion, the different languages and so on.
The story is about an extended family and friends who gather for a wedding. A young woman is getting married. Guests arrive from all over the country and abroad. The young bride-to-be is actually having an affair with a tv presenter. That strikes me as a little unusual for India.
Main characters are the closest family of the young woman getting married. She has a cousin living in the house, after her father’s death, and a younger brother.
It doesn’t take long to realize that the cousin is upset about seeing one of the guests. Her concern increases when she realizes that he’s very eager to befriend a little girl, another relative. While the rest of the story unfolds, you find out that the guest in question once sexually abused the bride’s cousin. She agonizes over the fate of the little girl and in the end, there’s a confrontation and her secret is revealed to the majority of the family.
The groom finds out that his bride-to-be has been involved with another man. Naturally, it complicates their relationship.
Another character that interests me, is the servant girl, Alice. As she works hard to serve the guests of the house, she watches the wedding preparations and you get the impression that she feels it’s high time she is married too. The man in charge of the wedding arrangements is the one she focuses her attention on.
She too, encounters complications, before her dream comes true.
Another character that attracts attention is a young man just returned from Australia. He has dyed hair and loves to go clubbing. You sense a culture clash, but appearances might be misleading. After all, dyed hair, clothing and visits to dance clubs are only superficial.
This movie fascinated me. One reason might be the fact that I’ve always found Indian and other cultures extremely interesting. I think it’s a movie that could be of interest to many different people. Perhaps not those who only like comedy or action, but in fact, you get a little of everything here, except special effects. Watch it. Enjoy. Chances are, you’ll love it too.
Interstate 60
Here’s the next movie in my series of comments/reviews on movies and tv series I’ve seen recently. I’d never heard of Interstate 60 until a friend recommended it to me.
It’s about a guy who’s got a birthday coming up. He happens to run into a creature who’s a real, genuine trickster – one of the few all American creatures who grant wishes. Not a genie, a human-type guy who calls himself O W Grant (One Wish Grant).
Just like all tricksters, Grant is unreliable. His wishes are often tainted and contains a trap. Many who have had a wish granted get killed or are tricked one way or another. A man that we get to see, gets run over by a car, immediately after having his thoughtless wish granted. Another one wanted to eat as much as he wanted, but hadn’t taken into consideration that he’d be constantly hungry and that it would get incredibly expensive.
The main character of the movie, Neal Oliver, wants an answer to what he’s going to do with his life. For once, this makes O W Grant take an interest, so he sends the guy off on a long trip through an America he doesn’t really know. You might say it’s an alternate universe.
Here Neal finds a town where drugs are legal – at least one – and it turns everyone into zombies who live for dancing in clubs and during the day they walk around like robots, sweeping floors or emptying garbage cans around the town. One difference between this town and the real world is that kids become adults at 16. A desperate mother hitches a ride with Neal to get her 16-year-old son back, but when she realizes she can’t, against his will, she uses the drug too and after that she’s happy again, but her mind’s a blank.
You also get to see a girl who has become obsessed with finding the perfect sex. She tries to get Neal first, but when he realizes that he’s only going to be a number in her notebook, he refuses, and claims that he’ll be the one she remembers because she couldn’t get him.
That makes her have a go at seducing Grant, but gets a nasty shock.. I won’t go into exactly what that is. The movie is full of crazy, drastic jokes, but there’s an underlying theme.
When Neal wakes up – because he seems to have dreamt it all, yet not – he has his answer. He knows what to do with his life. (Lucky guy!).
The movie is quite fragmented, but it’s all connected somehow, and besides, most of it’s fun and interesting. I can really recommend this movie, though I don’t know for sure that you’ll all like it as much as I did. At least try it and see what you think.
Howl's Moving Castle
The movie Howl’s Moving Castle, by the Japanese movie maker Hayao Miyazaki, is based on the Welsh fantasy writer, Diana Wynne Jones’ book by the same name. There’s quite a bit of difference between the movie and the book. Many of the DWJ:s fans hate the movie. Some of the movie fans have never read the book, and don’t know what they’re missing. I’m among the few people who like both the movie and the book. There’s a lot missing, but at the same time, it’s fascinating to be able to see what you’ve only been able to imagine before.
Howl – who is reputed to steal young girls’ hearts – really is as vane and as metrosexual as he appears to be in the book. Really pretty. Naturally he doesn’t actually steal the girls’ hearts, he merely seduces them, make them fall in love with him and then leave them.
The main character of the movie is actually the castle from the title. Wouldn’t you love living in a castle that can move to any place you like? It can also change appearance, according to Howl’s will. The reason for that is the fire demon Calcifer. In a way, he has a sort of symbiotic relationship with Howl, or rather with the castle. Calcifer is what makes the castle live.
Perhaps I ought to begin with a brief resumé. The main character – unless you count Howl – is a girl named Sophie. She’s the daughter of a now dead hatter. Her mother died young, but her father remarried, so Sophie has a stepmother. In the book, there are also two sisters, but in the movie just one. That can make the movie a bit confusing, but I guess not everything fits into a movie.
Sophie knows that an oldest daughter never does well for herself, so she doesn’t have any high expectations. She does however have plenty of common sense and both feet on the ground.
One day she meets a very handsome young man who helps her get to her sister, who works at a pastry shop. She also meets a witch – The Witch of the Waste – who curses Sophie. Suddenly, she’s not a hat maker apprentice, but an old lady. She doesn’t want to stay on like that, so she wanders off.
In the wilderness Sophie sees the famous moving castle and meets a scarecrow, who keeps showing up wherever she goes. The scarecrow helps her get into the castle by its back door. Once there, she hires herself as Howl’s housekeeper(/cleaning lady.
She hopes to find a way to break her curse, but to do that she has to help Calcifer break his. The plot is quite complicated. It gets worse, because everything feels rather fragmented due to the film maker trying to fit everything into the movie.
Despite that, I like the movie. It’s a fascinating, exciting adventure. If you like fantasy and animated films, I’m sure you’ll like this one. You should probably read the book too.
I just want to mention something about the voices. Whiny Calcifer’s voice is done by Billy Crystal. I watched the Swedish version with a Swedish comedian as Calcifer, but I can easily imagine Billy Crystal being just right for the part.
C.R.A.Z.Y
On Christmas Day, 1960 Zac is born, as the fourth son in a family that eventually has five sons. Just when he’s been born, he dies, but the doctors manage to bring him back. Then one of the older brothers drops him to the floor. During the following twenty years, Zac almost dies twice more.
From an early age, Zac turns out to be different from his brothers. For instance, he has a white lock of hair. His religious mother soon has the impression that he can heal the sick. What he can do, without a doubt, is making his youngest brother stop crying and go to sleep quietly.
Zac has trouble getting along with at least one of his older brothers, but other than that, everyone loves him. He loves his parents, but soon he realizes he has character traits which make his father regard him with doubts and concern. Is Zac not a ‘real’ man? Even before Zac is grown up, he has to struggle with his personality. He doesn’t want his father to stop loving him.
Before long, Zac finds out that he isn’t like others. He’s attracted to other boys, for instance his cousin’s sexy boyfriend. The two of them smoke marijuana together in a rather intimate way.
In the end, Zac can’t hide his true preferences anymore, and there’s an explosive confrontation with his father, who tells Zac to get lost. Zac leaves the country (Canada) and goes to Israel to complete the pilgrimage his mother has always dreamed of making.
At the same time, the family is hit by a disaster, right when Zac has almost managed to make friends with his older brother.
In this movie, you get to see twenty years of youth subculture. There’s a lot of music and the fashion of the 1970’s. Something I really appreciated was that the movie was in French.
I really liked this movie, even though it was quite sad. Despite that, there’s a bit of hope at the end. If you’re interested in modern history and music, you might like this movie.
Storm
For me, who lives in a small town, being able to watch all the movies I want is not something I can take for granted. Now I’ve taken care of that. That’s why I’ve seen more movies in the past couple of years, than I have for ages. Nice. It’s always fun to get a little variety. Otherwise it’s usually mainly tv (besides books, music and so on).
This time, I’d like to comment on a Swedish movie, Storm. The main characters are played by Eric Ericson (The Befallen/De drabbade), Eva Röse (The Befallen/De drabbade) and Jonas Karlsson (Once in a lifetime/Livet är en schlager). Since I live in the west of Sweden, I recognize some of the places the movie were shot in, and of course that’s fun. By chance, I walked by when the scene in the town square was shot (the one with the merry-go-rounds and so on). At the time, I had no idea what it was about.
The plot is centered around Donny (“DD”). He’s a pretty slimy guy, who slides around the trendy, cool places in Stockholm. Life and people around him are merely props and background for his constant chase after easy, quick experiences like free drinks and shared cocaine. He doesn’t date, because he considers that too expensive. Instead he studies hot women, so he can recall them later, when, as he puts it, he wants ‘a cozy moment’.
Suddenly, his comfortable, shallow life is turned upside down when a mysterious woman more or less lands on his cab. By then, Donny’s already seen her lower herself from a passageway crossing his street, down to his level. Since he doesn’t want to get involved with anyone else, Donny’s more concerned with his own safety, but despite that, he gets drawn into the mystery woman – Lova’s (pronounced Lor-vah) – adventures.
At times things get really menacing. An ominous man in dark clothes follows Lova everywhere she goes, and seems intent on silencing her for good. Now that Donny is involved too, he too has to run from the dark man.
After a while, Donny begins to realize that it’s far from a coincidence that he’s been pulled into the dramatic and mysterious incidents. Everything seems to be connected to his past. Eventually he needs to choose between trusting the dark man or Lova. The choice will have major consequences for his future.
I won’t say more about the plot, but the movie is really exciting and interesting. It does look a bit like a computer game, but I think it’s rather well done. Some people who have seen the movie complain about the dialogue, but I think you get a reasonable explanation as to why it sounds like it does. Watch the movie and you’ll find what it’s about.
When I rated the movie at some movie sites, I gave it a four, out of five. You might not agree, but I think you’ll find the movie worth watching.
