The first movie I saw was the world premiere of Stand Clear of the Closing Doors. My brother worked on the film, so I'm filialy obligated not to criticize it, but independently of that it was quite good. It had high aspirations - it was about a thirteen-year old boy with an autism spectrum disorder who runs away from his home in Far Rockaway in the days before Hurricane Sandy and spends several days on the subway while his undocumented mother tries to find him without attracting unwelcome attention - and it seems to meet them fairly well. But I thoughts its real successes were in the details: the cinematography; the uneasy, argumentative, intense relationship between the boy's mother and his teenage sister; the matter-of-fact portrayal of the thousand mundane indignities (a bedroom just big enough for two twin beds with a curtain between them, a toilet lid wet with urine, a long bus ride to a menial job) that attend this family's life even when things are going well.
Next, I saw Farah Goes Bang, about a trio of women just out of college - including the title character, Farah, the daughter of Iranian immigrants - who combine their idealistic desire to prevent George Bush from winning a second term in office (the movie is set in 2004) with their youthful need to drive cross-country while making crude jokes by joining the Kerry campaign. Trying to win Democratic votes in places like Texas and Kentucky exposes them to some fairly predictable confrontations, but also to some less-stereotypical moments that challenge the characters' assumptions. Amidst all this, a bit nonsensically, is the movie's other plot - Farah's desire to lose her virginity, and her fear of sex, both of which stem from her frankly antagonistic relationship with her body. These issues are portrayed in a way that is realistic and sensitive without being preachy. But ultimately the movie is more concerned with being fun - by which I mean funny - than with making its own point, and Farah's bang is more literal than figurative.
Later that same day I saw a set of shorts. There were seven of them, all set in New York City. I thought at the time that half of them were good and half bad, but I can only remember three of them now, and the one that sticks out the most was unenjoyable while I watched it. It's very hard for a short film to be medium-good; they tend to be very bad, forgettable, or amazing.
Around this time I finished the book I had been reading and started a novel called Mercury Falls, which is truly horrible. It seems to be aiming for a combination of Douglas Adams and Piers Anthony, but it lacks originality, subtlety, and humor, which means it's mostly just literal interpretation of fairy tales with an awful lot of sarcastic apocalysm. In an attempt to dilute the early phases of the book - sometimes it simply takes a while to get into something - I began alternating it with Something Borrowed, one of the novels I keep on my kindle for literary crises such as this. I never quite tire of this novel or its sibling, Something Blue, because of the author's stunning command of narrative voice and her Austenian attention to detail.
The next movie I saw was A Case of You. I had really high hopes for this one. It was billed as a hyper-modern and highly original love story, but it turned out to be a very old-fashioned love story with some postmodern flourishes. Justin Long plays a writer of movie novelizations (this is my dream job, or one of them) who longs to become a serious writer (which is way too hard to be my dream job). Instead he spends all his time gazing longingly at his barrista, a standard-issue Manic Pixie Dreamgirl. When he accidentally learns her name, he uses her Facebook profile to turn himself into her dream guy. The relationship is going well - and, better yet, he's writing a book about it - until he decides pixiegirl doesn't really know him. As with Stand Clear, I thought this movie's successes were in its details - the well-shot scenes, the wardrobe choices, the Sienna Miller cameo and Busy Philips' and Vince Vaughn's small roles. Even Rachel Wood, as the pixie, had very little to do, and Justin Long's major function was to look confused. I am writing such a long paragraph about this movie because I can't seem to arrive at a conclusion. It wanted to be more than a Friday-night chick flick, and in some ways it succeeded. It had things to say about art and authenticity. But the core of the movie - the two main characters - felt empty.
My most recent (but, rather alarmingly, not final) viewing was of Adult World. This has been the sleeper hit of my TFF experience so far. It's about a recent college graduate who fancies herself a poet but ends up working at an adult video store to make rent. She develops a one-sided mentor-protege relationship with a semi-established poet and a surprisingly authentic friendship with a transvestite while navigating her shifting relationships with her parents, her best friend from college, and (of course) the adorable manager of the video store. So this movie had some of the same serious-ish themes as the other movies I just talked about - notably young women coming into their adulthood and the unglamourousness of the artistic life - but it handled them with impressive lightness. It was, flat-out, funny, in exactly the sort of way I like. I laughed at the protagonist, all the time, because she was so ridiculous in exactly the way that a 22-year-old poet of course is ridiculous - but I also cared about her. The other characters, too, were well-drawn, and even the smaller roles seemed multidimensional. John Cusack was in this movie, and he was as entertaining as he always is, and he was far from the best thing about it.
When I came home from the movie, I found what appears to be a book about the apocalypse in my mailbox.
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