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For my moviegoing public -- The Jacket, or, This movie's got some 'splainin to do
But first...I give you Ross inventory Friday night.
It all started when I counted this item in the food aisle:
and I couldn't resist showing Gerry, adding the statement "I like my oatmeal like I like my men....thick and rough." Or, more accurately, "thin and unable to hold a spoon."
Over the course of the night the joke was repeated ad nauseum, until it degenerated into, "I like my oatmeal like I like my arms...ropey and hairy" (Gerry's arms are just so) and finally, in Intimate Apparel, "I like my oatmeal like I like my panties...polka dotted and crotchless."
In the cold light of day the following morning, and judging from Tery's tepid reaction, I realized it isn't THAT funny. But on the flip side of a 6-hour inventory, at the end of a long day, at the end of a long week, we had tears in our eyes and difficulty breathing. Good times.
I'm sure our co-workers thought us quite, quite mad.
And now, because you can't sit and fume about our inept government all the time, I rented The Jacket.
People may remember way back when I first realized my love for Adrien Brody. All this time my love has been simmering on a back burner, though certainly not forgotten. So for his starring role, I was drawn to this movie.
It was compared to The Butterfly Effect (a fair comparison, if unfortunate, as I wasn't too crazy about that movie) as well as Donnie Darko (also a fair comparison, if a teasing one, as the similarities are not really worth mentioning). Don't you miss the days when movies were able to stand on their own and not examined as a sum of their inspirations? The movie was also marketed inexplicably as a horror flick, but since Adrien was really my main attraction, ask me if I cared about the gross mislabeling.
It had a pretty all-star cast even apart from my boy, with Jennifer Jason-Leigh, Kris Kristofferson, Kelly Lynch and Keira Knightley (and I just realized after typing that out that the entire supporting cast's names begin exclusively with J's, K's and L's. Funny).
Adrien plays Jack Starks, a Gulf War veteran who is shot in the head but somehow lives. He returns to society despite suffering retrograde amnesia and is wrongly accused of a murder. He's sentenced to an asylum, where he is subjected to a radical, controversial treatment at the hands of Kris Kristofferson involving a body-length straitjacket and being isolated in the drawer of a morgue cabinet. While in the jacket, he discovers he can travel forward in time, where he hooks up with Keira Knightley (who he meets earlier in the movie when she's a little girl). He also finds out that he dies in the past (or actually, present) and the rest of the movie is devoted to him trying to figure out how so he can prevent it (which is the only Donnie Darko connection I can see).
Got all that? Well too bad, cuz now I'm going to pick it to pieces. And I can't do that without the use of some spoilers.
*sigh* Where to begin? Well, scene one...I certainly don't have any military training, but even I could tell the Iraqi boy that was clearly agitated was up to no good and might pull a gun. So when Jack gets popped in the head it really came as no surprise to me. I was a lot more surprised that he didn't die from the wound, and felt his bizarre recovery needed a bit more explanation.
He meets up with a little girl, Jackie, and her mother, stranded with their broken-down truck. Jack fixes it and bonds with Jackie in a truly touching moment. Her mother (Kelly Lynch) is strung out and only screams at him, so he moves on. But his naivete only worsens, as he hitches a ride from a fidgety, trigger-happy, redneck sumbitch who kills a traffic cop and pins it on Jack. And then vanishes for the rest of the movie. I could have dealt with that if we weren't then shown a flash of him near the end sitting at a bar, for no apparent reason. What the....? I'll be watching it again, but the first time through tossing that scene in felt completely unnecessary and nonsensical. Or maybe it's just me.
Obviously the first few sessions in the jacket are pretty traumatizing and unpleasant for Jack, until he realizes he can travel forward 15 years to hang out with the 20-something Jackie (Knightley). Not only does he adapt fairly quickly to these circumstances (to the point where he deliberately acts out just to be put back in the drawer), but it is never at all explained how this time travel is being accomplished or how Jack can seemingly control it to land precisely where he wants to in the future. And he doesn't think it's at all skeevy that he first met his girlfriend when she was 10 years old.
Some words on Keira Knightley. I forgot she was in Pirates of the Caribbean, having only seen it once, and I don't think she's as gorgeous as the rest of the world does, apparently. I thought her acting was initially a little heavy-handed and overwrought ("Okay, you're an alcoholic and an emotional mess. Let's see lots of rubbing your face and tangling your hands in your hair"). She leaves Jack to forage for his own food in her almost bare fridge, and he finds a flat stone in the freezer engraved with her childhood nickname, "Petal." She freaks out about his "spying" (again demonstrating some major overacting) but what I want to know is why the hell she keeps the rock in her freezer? Will it go bad otherwise? Also, when she smiles she just looks constipated. I gained more respect for her when I watched the extras and realized she was putting on an American accent, which was quite respectable.
There is also a fairly extended sex scene in the middle of the movie that did nothing for me, being made up as it was of lots of blurry, abstract shots of disembodied parts with no big picture to put them in context. A shoulder here (or is it a hip? Both actors are so damn bony), the curve of an elbow (or is it a knee?) there. We don't even get to see so much as a real kiss. Dammit, I wanted to see my boy in action! But on the deleted scenes section of the features is the original scene, including kissing, nuzzling, stroking and undulating galore, apparently cut to the crappy edited version because the American test audience was too "Puritan." Thank you, Middle America, for censoring my movies for me. As if anyone who might be offended by the first (very tastefully done but slightly more obvious what's going on) version would even be renting this movie. I'm so tired of filmmakers pandering to the most uptight people. I thought that was what the MPAA rating system was for?
Jack works to solve the mystery of his death back in 1992, mostly by learning things in the future that he brings back to the present and then passes on to the doctors of his asylum. No time at all is spent on what kind of entropy this might create for his timeline. Every Star Trek episode dealing with the subject has taught me that changes in the past mean changes in the future. Even The Butterfly Effect knew about the law, as every time the hero tries to alter the past to save someone from dying, it just means someone else dies instead. Jack seems immune from this danger except for the one biggie, when he prevents Jackie's mother from dying, thus altering her life significantly for the better.
As for his death? Well here's the biggest spoiler of all, so if you've just been flirting with them so far, look away now. You've been warned. He gets Jennifer Jason-Leigh to drive him to Jackie's house so he can warn her mother about the way she will die unless she changes her rock 'n roll lifestyle. Then halfway back to the hospital he starts feeling shaky and woozy, for no apparent reason. So when he gets out of the car he slips on the ice and cracks his skull on the pavement. Rather than attempt to care for his wound, as one would expect from doctors (even psychiatric doctors), they instead follow Jack's orders to put him in the jacket one last time so he can return to the future with Jackie. He meets up with her and she's got a shiny new car and a shiny new life. He gets a ride from her and they happily drive off into the sunset together. The End.
Which makes little to no sense. If Jack is dragged back to 1992 whenever his session is over, what will happen to him in 2007 when he dies in 1992? That isn't explained at all, opting instead for a glorious, beautiful, happy ending riddled with logistical flaws. There are three alternate endings in the bonus section, all of which cut back after the ride into the sunset to Jack in the hospital in Iraq, where he rightfully died the first time. As much as I despise "and the whole thing was a dream" movies, I have to admit this ending makes a ton more sense and I really wish they'd kept it. Yes, a little bleaker and grimmer, but more logical. American audiences don't want logic. They don't want sex either, apparently. They just want "happily ever after." Fucking sheep.
Despite the faulty ending, and the arguably faulty messing around with the time/space continuum with no apparent consequences, I actually really liked this movie. It sucks that there's no commentary on the disc and I've already watched most of the bonus features, but the story (and of course my Adrien) was interesting enough that I think I'd like to watch it a few more times. Actually 4 out of 5.
It all started when I counted this item in the food aisle:
and I couldn't resist showing Gerry, adding the statement "I like my oatmeal like I like my men....thick and rough." Or, more accurately, "thin and unable to hold a spoon."
Over the course of the night the joke was repeated ad nauseum, until it degenerated into, "I like my oatmeal like I like my arms...ropey and hairy" (Gerry's arms are just so) and finally, in Intimate Apparel, "I like my oatmeal like I like my panties...polka dotted and crotchless."
In the cold light of day the following morning, and judging from Tery's tepid reaction, I realized it isn't THAT funny. But on the flip side of a 6-hour inventory, at the end of a long day, at the end of a long week, we had tears in our eyes and difficulty breathing. Good times.
I'm sure our co-workers thought us quite, quite mad.
And now, because you can't sit and fume about our inept government all the time, I rented The Jacket.
People may remember way back when I first realized my love for Adrien Brody. All this time my love has been simmering on a back burner, though certainly not forgotten. So for his starring role, I was drawn to this movie.
It was compared to The Butterfly Effect (a fair comparison, if unfortunate, as I wasn't too crazy about that movie) as well as Donnie Darko (also a fair comparison, if a teasing one, as the similarities are not really worth mentioning). Don't you miss the days when movies were able to stand on their own and not examined as a sum of their inspirations? The movie was also marketed inexplicably as a horror flick, but since Adrien was really my main attraction, ask me if I cared about the gross mislabeling.
It had a pretty all-star cast even apart from my boy, with Jennifer Jason-Leigh, Kris Kristofferson, Kelly Lynch and Keira Knightley (and I just realized after typing that out that the entire supporting cast's names begin exclusively with J's, K's and L's. Funny).
Adrien plays Jack Starks, a Gulf War veteran who is shot in the head but somehow lives. He returns to society despite suffering retrograde amnesia and is wrongly accused of a murder. He's sentenced to an asylum, where he is subjected to a radical, controversial treatment at the hands of Kris Kristofferson involving a body-length straitjacket and being isolated in the drawer of a morgue cabinet. While in the jacket, he discovers he can travel forward in time, where he hooks up with Keira Knightley (who he meets earlier in the movie when she's a little girl). He also finds out that he dies in the past (or actually, present) and the rest of the movie is devoted to him trying to figure out how so he can prevent it (which is the only Donnie Darko connection I can see).
Got all that? Well too bad, cuz now I'm going to pick it to pieces. And I can't do that without the use of some spoilers.
*sigh* Where to begin? Well, scene one...I certainly don't have any military training, but even I could tell the Iraqi boy that was clearly agitated was up to no good and might pull a gun. So when Jack gets popped in the head it really came as no surprise to me. I was a lot more surprised that he didn't die from the wound, and felt his bizarre recovery needed a bit more explanation.
He meets up with a little girl, Jackie, and her mother, stranded with their broken-down truck. Jack fixes it and bonds with Jackie in a truly touching moment. Her mother (Kelly Lynch) is strung out and only screams at him, so he moves on. But his naivete only worsens, as he hitches a ride from a fidgety, trigger-happy, redneck sumbitch who kills a traffic cop and pins it on Jack. And then vanishes for the rest of the movie. I could have dealt with that if we weren't then shown a flash of him near the end sitting at a bar, for no apparent reason. What the....? I'll be watching it again, but the first time through tossing that scene in felt completely unnecessary and nonsensical. Or maybe it's just me.
Obviously the first few sessions in the jacket are pretty traumatizing and unpleasant for Jack, until he realizes he can travel forward 15 years to hang out with the 20-something Jackie (Knightley). Not only does he adapt fairly quickly to these circumstances (to the point where he deliberately acts out just to be put back in the drawer), but it is never at all explained how this time travel is being accomplished or how Jack can seemingly control it to land precisely where he wants to in the future. And he doesn't think it's at all skeevy that he first met his girlfriend when she was 10 years old.
Some words on Keira Knightley. I forgot she was in Pirates of the Caribbean, having only seen it once, and I don't think she's as gorgeous as the rest of the world does, apparently. I thought her acting was initially a little heavy-handed and overwrought ("Okay, you're an alcoholic and an emotional mess. Let's see lots of rubbing your face and tangling your hands in your hair"). She leaves Jack to forage for his own food in her almost bare fridge, and he finds a flat stone in the freezer engraved with her childhood nickname, "Petal." She freaks out about his "spying" (again demonstrating some major overacting) but what I want to know is why the hell she keeps the rock in her freezer? Will it go bad otherwise? Also, when she smiles she just looks constipated. I gained more respect for her when I watched the extras and realized she was putting on an American accent, which was quite respectable.
There is also a fairly extended sex scene in the middle of the movie that did nothing for me, being made up as it was of lots of blurry, abstract shots of disembodied parts with no big picture to put them in context. A shoulder here (or is it a hip? Both actors are so damn bony), the curve of an elbow (or is it a knee?) there. We don't even get to see so much as a real kiss. Dammit, I wanted to see my boy in action! But on the deleted scenes section of the features is the original scene, including kissing, nuzzling, stroking and undulating galore, apparently cut to the crappy edited version because the American test audience was too "Puritan." Thank you, Middle America, for censoring my movies for me. As if anyone who might be offended by the first (very tastefully done but slightly more obvious what's going on) version would even be renting this movie. I'm so tired of filmmakers pandering to the most uptight people. I thought that was what the MPAA rating system was for?
Jack works to solve the mystery of his death back in 1992, mostly by learning things in the future that he brings back to the present and then passes on to the doctors of his asylum. No time at all is spent on what kind of entropy this might create for his timeline. Every Star Trek episode dealing with the subject has taught me that changes in the past mean changes in the future. Even The Butterfly Effect knew about the law, as every time the hero tries to alter the past to save someone from dying, it just means someone else dies instead. Jack seems immune from this danger except for the one biggie, when he prevents Jackie's mother from dying, thus altering her life significantly for the better.
As for his death? Well here's the biggest spoiler of all, so if you've just been flirting with them so far, look away now. You've been warned. He gets Jennifer Jason-Leigh to drive him to Jackie's house so he can warn her mother about the way she will die unless she changes her rock 'n roll lifestyle. Then halfway back to the hospital he starts feeling shaky and woozy, for no apparent reason. So when he gets out of the car he slips on the ice and cracks his skull on the pavement. Rather than attempt to care for his wound, as one would expect from doctors (even psychiatric doctors), they instead follow Jack's orders to put him in the jacket one last time so he can return to the future with Jackie. He meets up with her and she's got a shiny new car and a shiny new life. He gets a ride from her and they happily drive off into the sunset together. The End.
Which makes little to no sense. If Jack is dragged back to 1992 whenever his session is over, what will happen to him in 2007 when he dies in 1992? That isn't explained at all, opting instead for a glorious, beautiful, happy ending riddled with logistical flaws. There are three alternate endings in the bonus section, all of which cut back after the ride into the sunset to Jack in the hospital in Iraq, where he rightfully died the first time. As much as I despise "and the whole thing was a dream" movies, I have to admit this ending makes a ton more sense and I really wish they'd kept it. Yes, a little bleaker and grimmer, but more logical. American audiences don't want logic. They don't want sex either, apparently. They just want "happily ever after." Fucking sheep.
Despite the faulty ending, and the arguably faulty messing around with the time/space continuum with no apparent consequences, I actually really liked this movie. It sucks that there's no commentary on the disc and I've already watched most of the bonus features, but the story (and of course my Adrien) was interesting enough that I think I'd like to watch it a few more times. Actually 4 out of 5.