Labor Day Weekend Movie Wrap-Up

How I spent my Labor Day weekend: watching movies! Here's the long and the short of it, from Netflix to in the theater....

The Rules of Attraction
I somehow missed this movie when it came out and it's been in my queue for a long time. I usually like stories of disillusionment and ennui among upper-middle-class private school kids (heck, two of my favorite books are The Secret History and Prep), but this one just seemed to be too much about the sex and the drugs and not enough story. I've never seen an episode of Dawson's Creek, but I have to imagine that JVDB made a point to play the anti-Dawson here. He was okay as the sexual predator / drug dealer, but now I don't think I'll ever want to see him as a sweet romantic high school kid. And our beloved Boone made for a good Rob Lowe-lookalike gay student who fell in the love with the wrong man. But the rest of the movie? Eh, not so much. Cool camera tricks, I'll give it that, but I was bored.

The Thin Man
I finally took the time to introduce myself to those cinematic icons, Nick and Nora, and I thought they were a hoot! William Powell and Myrna Loy ended up playing the pair in something like 6 films, and I've got to add them all to my queue right away. :-) This first in the series is a film about several unsolved murders that keep racking up, and cosmopolitan marrieds Nick and Nora get on the case to try and figure out whodunit. These two characters are a lot of fun, flirty and sarcastic and always with at least two cocktails going at a time - things that we don't see very often now in this PC age. Although right as I was thinking "Wow, Nick and Nora were so ahead of their time!" they cut to the bedroom scene and I saw the Code at work, as the happily married couple said goodnight from separate twin beds. Pfffflt. I also loved seeing so many typical "whodunit" tricks in what must have been their first, seminal uses.... particularly inviting everyone to a dinner party to try and root out the culprit over the main course. That's a device well-used in one of my all-time favorite spoofs, and I could just imagine everyone taking a bite out of their monkey's brains.... this is, after all, Washington, DC!

Little Miss Sunshine
This is one of the best movies I've seen all year. I loved everything about it! Greg Kinnear and Steve Carell should be in many more movies together. Can you imagine what the Daily Show and Talk Soup alums were like to hang out with on the set? Yet they played such lovable losers. Really, if Steve Carell can make a gay suicidal Proust scholar funny, then the man can do anything. And Toni Collette again proved herself to be the actress I think I'd most want to be friends with, based on the characters she chooses to play. And, oh yeah, I will never, ever, ever be able to watch a beauty pageant again without thinking of "Superfreak." Well done by all!

25th Hour
This is a Spike Lee joint from a few years ago, with Ed Norton as a man who's trying to make amends and tie up all his loose ends in the 24 hours before going to prison on a drug charge. The movie was a little bit too bleak for me, but I think it had a good story. Norton is great, as always, continually proving he's one of the best actors of our generation. There are strong supporting performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper as his childhood best friends, Brian Cox as his dad, and Rosario Dawson as his girlfriend. I have to admit, Rosario is hot, and she just might need to be added to my "other" list. The only real downside to this movie was the presence of Anna Paquin, whom I firmly believes ruins every single movie she's in. Why do casting agents still hire her?!?!?