Somewhere (2010)

 
Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a famous Hollywood actor who parties a lot and is kind of an asshole.   But then he has a chance to bond with his 11-year-old daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning), and show that he has a good side.

Didn't we just cover this trope in my previous post?

Anyway, Sofia Coppola wrote and directed this film about being a Hollywood celebrity and, also, about being the daughter of a Hollywood celebrity.  She places a fair number of scenes in an overseas hotel and includes both a celebrity-translation scene and a moody-female-at-mealtime scene, just like in her film Last in Translation.  In other words, she isn't exactly stretching by exploring new territory here. Nonetheless, I think this movie has some merit, despite my indifference to the plight of Hollywood movie stars and an ending that seems overly calculated for a "cool" final image.

Coppola has a real flair for minimalist scenes that extend to just before the breaking point: long enough to properly establish the emptiness of Marco's life but stopping a moment before I want to jump onscreen (like Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr.) to make something happen. The movie's main drawback is that even though Dorff is well cast as Marco, the character isn't sufficiently engaging for me to care if his pampered life is empty. However, I did learn a valuable lesson from this film.  Not only do Hollywood celebrities live better lives than the characters in Biutiful, but I live a better life by watching films like this instead of Biutiful.

Biutiful (2010)

I'm not going to bother to review Biutiful, I'm just going to post this photo as therapy for people who've seen the film.

All right, I'll say a few things about this depressing movie.  Uxbal (Javier Bardem) is involved in illegal activities such as selling drugs and sweatshop labor, but he's a morally ambiguous character because he cares about his children (I think that's a standard movie trope for showing that a criminal has a good side) and has other positive traits.  His life sucks, and then it sucks harder, and then it sucks even harder.  That's essentially the plot of the movie.

Javier Bardem deserves the accolades he's received for his performance.  Also, the film's visual imagery is stunning; indeed, I think someone should deconstruct this movie by cherry-picking the most striking images and showing them in random order, thus freeing them from the oppressive burden of the screenplay.  I'll concede that some thought went into the screenplay; for example, I liked how a bit of dialogue that seemed like a throwaway line could prove to be important later in the film.  It's even possible that the filmmakers were trying to make a statement about the plight of illegal immigrants, although that statement would probably have been more effective if the immigrants were more fully developed as individual characters (and seemed less like a plot device created specifically to make the protagonist's life more tormented) and the film didn't make it seem like everybody else's life also sucked.

This film is slow paced, ponderous, humorless, two-and-a-half hours long, and so unrelentingly miserable that I have to wonder if it was secretly funded by a pharmaceutical company to promote antidepressants.  It seems to be based on the assumption that wallowing in suffering while constantly unveiling negative plot developments is the same as crafting a story with real depth. That thinking is like the mentality of an adolescent who believes that his poorly written, angst-ridden poetry is profound simply because it is dark and depressing.  Except that the adolescent is sincerely expressing himself as best as he can, whereas the filmmakers squandered real talent with this project.

Ten good things about Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

In order to prove that I am not a curmudgeon, I am going to list ten good things about a book that I don't particularly like.  The book is Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So by Mark Vonnegut. It's a memoir about his experiences coping with mental illness and substance abuse, working as a pediatrician, being the son of  a famous writer (Kurt Vonnegut), and other matters.

1. The book is only 203 pages and is a relatively quick read.  So even if you don't like the book, you don't have to spend a lot of time reading to finish it.

2. It is very easy to remember the author's name.  This is useful if you're trying to get a copy of the book after forgetting to write down the title.

3. There were no sparkly vampires anywhere in the book.

4. I think Mark Vonnegut likes patting himself on the back, but I also think he's earned it. Despite having bipolar disorder (or possibly another psychiatric disorder) and experiencing multiple psychotic breaks -- including one that occurred many years after he thought he was done with them -- he still managed to have a successful career as a pediatrician and write a couple books.

5. Mark Vonnegut seems to have been influenced by his father's sense of humor and there are some funny lines in the book.  Compare this to Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), who seems to have been influenced by Kurt Vonnegut's typographical experiments with unfortunate results.  Indeed, the mere fact that Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More wasn't written by Jonathan Safran Foer and doesn't abuse ellipses with relentless cruelty is itself a reason to like this book.  So it goes.

6. I think the chapter about his volunteer work in Honduras is interesting, particularly his observations about how the experience differed from his expectations.

7. Mark Vonnegut gripes about the negative effect of our insurance system on healthcare.  He doesn't say anything new about this issue, but at least he's griping about a legitimate problem. 

8. The book provides an insider's perspective on admissions into Harvard Medical School from Dr. Vonnegut's time on the admissions committee.  I wish Vonnegut had elaborated, but at least he gives us some insight and seems skeptical enough that he appears to be candid.

9. I admit that I don't care about his (non-psychedelic) mushroom hobby, and I suspect that a lot of other people don‘t either.  But I admire Mark Vonnegut's chutzpah for choosing to end the book with an entire chapter about it.  This is a book about experiencing psychotic breaks, overcoming adversity to become a successful physician, being the son of one of the most renowned writers of the 20th century, participating in a medical mission to Honduras...and the grand finale is a chapter about mushrooms.  I have to respect an author who refuses to kowtow to other people's notions of interesting reading material. Also, mushrooms are very healthy (well, except when they're poisonous).

10. I also admit that I don't particularly like the style of the book.  Much of it consists of short tidbits that raise interesting issues without exploring them in depth, sometimes substituting funny one-liners for real substance, and the book tends to bounce around between topics without a real sense of cohesion. However, I want other people to like this type of writing because that's essentially what I do on my blog.  So I'm going to list it as a good thing.