i like to mash snow. it gives me a tremendous sense of self-satisfaction. so i finally watched garden state. and it was about what i expected. a few ups, a few downs, scenes that were great, scenes that were lacking. my biggest problem with the whole thing was how quickly some of the characters went from total strangers to the best of friends. there would be moments throughout the movie when i was thinking "wait, why are they doing this for each other?" i felt like i was being force fed the fact that the main characters were really really getting along. this is not a knock on the acting abilities of anyone, it was a script issue. the movie really held so much promise but i think it failed to deliver. i really want to watch it again however, if only to see if it appreciates with each viewing. i thought the best parts of the movie was when it went quirky and shied away from normal movie convention. but the quirkiness only lasted so long and by the end of the movie, it was all about revelations and kissing. i've decided that once kissing is used as an expression of revelation, that's it for me, i disconnect from the movie. using kissing or sex as the denouement just seems too easy. write around the kissing, not into it.



i think lost in translation ruined me. the ending there was just too perfect. bob harris' inaudible whisper to charlotte was just the cherry on top. not knowing what was said allows your imagination to run free; without having to listen to some writer trying to put in words that are never up to the task of describing the moment. the characters' attachment to each other was also much more gradual in lost, and that made all the difference. they had a believable synergy, while garden seemed to thrust zach and natalie together. adding blatant romance to a movie relationship must be reallly hard. having nothing to mask emotions or feelings kind of inevitably drags your movie into cheesedom.



it took me a good thirty minutes to get into the movie, as my mind couldn't quite let the eyes and ears roam free yet. i was analyzing everything and wondering if i liked this or that. but then at some point i just let myself go -- or the movie pulled me in -- and i stopped thinking. i did cringe heavily when natalie portman first appeared on-screen however. i didn't want her character to be annoying. i really wanted to love her in this movie. and luckily, she was fine. she was wonderful in fact. she was channeling her marty character of beautiful girls. but instead of intelligence and wit, her sam character relied mainly on personality quirks to make us love her. i prefer the wit of beautiful girls. but as marty said in beautiful, "i might grow to be five-ten. i'll be hot." and natalie portman has grown up and is indeed, hot.



beautiful girls is so underrated as a movie. like criminally underrated. the dialogue is ridiculously good. christina shattered my world when she told me that the writer of beautiful girls, scott rosenberg, also wrote con air, gone in 60 seconds, kangaroo jack and spiderman 2. so lines like "put down the bunny" sprang from the same creative well as "you go to the penitentiary and i become the laughingstock of the brownies." how can this be? so much brilliance in one movie and then so much crap in all the others? i've cast mr rosenberg aside as having had just one inspired year and then just cashing in the rest of the way. he's like the nas of movie writing. "that's a one hot album every ten year average..." plus, the sparks between 30 year old willie and 13 year old marty was so much more evident, despite having very few scenes together and not being the central focus of the movie.



so, in terms of a movie about two people finding it each, i'd say garden state ranks much lower than lost in translation, lower than beautiful girls, but still worth watching. i'll have to re-watch before sunrise again to see how that fits into the whole rubric. but i'm guessing garden state will rank higher than before sunrise. having said all that, garden state is probably still the best film i've seen all summer. not that that's saying much since i've seen nearly all duds for the past three months.



"peace out, playa."