Dazed And Confused

Alright, let's do it.

I need to express my apologies first and foremost, for not seeing this movie until I was either a junior or senior in high school. And my opinion has not changed at all, I loved it the first time and love it just as much now. Which is odd because in terms of story there's hardly any. It's the characters or more accurately the performances and overall experience of the film is why people hold it so highly and with a lot of adoration. The story is just about teens in high school and junior high enjoying the last day of school and the subsequent evening in 1976. That's it. It's not even a, well we finished high school so what the hell do we do with our lives, kinda vibe. It's just following various groups of kids as they meander around the real town of Austin, Texas. No sets, no bullshit, just the real deal. And I think that's the perfect way to describe the film, it's the real deal. How the teens talk and act, what they do after finally getting out of school, for all intents and purposes in my head this might as well be fact. But that's what is to be expected, Richard Linklater produced, wrote, and directed this movie so it is 100% his baby and he does such good work with it all. It's such a fun, easily watchable, and highly quotable movie. Most everyone's favorite character is McConaughey, and he is brilliant but the rest of the cast do such great work it's hard not to give them credit. My personal favorite of the bunch is Slater, he just cracks me up and was my favorite long before the George Washington monologue he gives. Christ, it even has the best damn history teacher ever potrayed in cinematic history who flat out explains and gloriously so, the reasons why America even exists. I almost applauded. The soundtrack is also a slam dunk, with a perfect storm of late 60s/70s tracks, from Black Sabbath to ZZ Top to Bob Dylan. It's a soundtrack totally worth buying. I know this is just an unimaginable rainstorm of praise for this movie in all it's facets, but did anything happen that I hated? Yes, actually. Very severely if I can speak plainly. Not about the production but just the, for lack of a better word mentality of this town. It really struck me as a vicious cycle, seeing kids get brutally beat with paddles and sophomores be completely and quite honestly repulsively subjugated. And hardly anyone bats an eye at it. I'm serious man, watching those girls go through so much shit just left a scar on my heart that enrages me to this day and very truthfully makes me feel horrendous. It's f***ed up and there's no reason for it. I detest it with every last vestige of my soul and particle of my body. Which is the only reason why it doesn't get a 10/10! It's a solid 9/10 from me, 4 stars check it out! You're in for a trip man. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Booksmart

Man I wish I saw this in theaters!

This was a great fun movie, I pretty much loved it from beginning to end. So this is Olivia Wilde's directorial debut centered around two teenage girls, Amy and Molly who decide to let loose the night before graduation and move onto college, and I have to say I flippin' love these girls. They're funny, they're intelligent, but they're not sticks in the mud or uptight, they act like teenagers, they can be weird and silly but still have real conversations with their friends. I thought the writing for the characters was incredibly well done, and the jokes and humor made me laugh so hard I sounded like a combination of a bull frog and Muttley from Wacky Races. That hard. No movie has made me laugh that hard ever, but not only did I laugh I got emotionally involved quick. Beanie Feldstein who I already loved in Lady Bird had so much time to shine in this movie, and I enjoyed Kaitlyn Dever from shows like Justified and Last Man Standing so I knew she was going to be a lot of fun in this. They have superb chemistry together and their friendship is one that I've experienced before so I grew attached to them and really enjoyed the ride with them. They mainly are trying to get to one big party but of course it quickly gets derailed and they encounter all sorts of weird people and situations, including one person who might be the best part of the entire movie, I'm not exactly sure who she is but she's played by Billie Lourd and is actually the best running gag I've seen in awhile. She just ends up at all these places way before Amy and Molly do, and she is completely off her rocker and I love everything about it. I will say however I had some massive issues with the movie. Now I'll be perfectly clear, I actually liked the fact that Amy was a lesbian, they don't overplay it and it's just a part of her character and I like that. However! The relationship the movie tries to project is just...wrong. So let me lay this situation out, Amy meets up with that bitchy character in every high school and then they argue about not really knowing each other before Amy kisses her on the lips. Hwhat? Granted she was in a bad place at the time emotionally so I can forgive a stupid decision but then they are about to have sex, and then my contempt grows. The situation ends badly and yet they both kinda want to be in a relationship together and I'm just wondering who thought that was needed in the script. Okay fine, it's a relatively new move I've never seen in a teen movie before, hell the closest we got to innovation was the weird quiet girl hook up with the jock in The Breakfast Club, but it just screams wrong to me. You don't try to screw some **** that you hate in high school, it's a stupid decision and I'd give them about 3 months before they break up. Second and most importantly, the ending. The bombshell drops that Amy will be leaving for Botswana for an entire year before she starts attending college and Molly has to say goodbye to her friend. I was having an emotional meltdown suffering friggin' PTSD from Lost In Translation and Her, to the point where I got so angry it almost ruined the movie for me. I mean, they totally don't just go their seperate ways and never see each other again for a whole year, but it dragged it out long enough to the point where I was legitimately concerned they were gonna pull that emotional card on me. That's how much I loved seeing this friendship between these two girls, I was gonna just flip out over a depressing ending to a fun movie, but the other side to that coin was well they just toyed with my emotions and now they can go to hell. I was seriously that upset, very few movies can make me that emotional but this one did. But I stepped away for a few days and gathered my thoughts, and yes you should see this movie. It is great fun, hilarious, and endearing despite the issues I took with it. Yes the ending made me have a breakdown and the relationship angle was just...are you serious, but it's a good movie perfect for a night in with friends. 3 stars, 7.5/10, go rent it and enjoy yourself.

10 Things I Hate About You

I was pleasantly surprised.

Outside of the 80s John Hughes movies, and especially in the late 90s and a good chunk of the 2000s I just don't watch high school teen films. Mostly because it always seems like the same damn movie, high school romance with stereotyped characters, and no real substance. And I held this movie right up there in that category, but I was incredibly shocked to find the movie was made in 1999 when such a concept as high school was as vague and alien a concept as you could get since I was 4 years old, and yet I always heard about this movie from the ages of 9 and up. 10 Things I Hate About You, what a great movie, it's a teen romance movie done so well, oh Heath Ledger is a dream in that movie, the praise was astronomical. And I just never watched it, I had no interest in it, even when we covered Shakespeare in school specifically The Taming Of The Shrew we watched the Elizabeth Taylor version and this movie. I was way more interested in the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton version than this one, cause the last time I saw Shakespeare modernized a few years before that....ugh. So this was really and truly my first real viewing of it. I, I kinda loved it guys. It's so much a teen high school romance movie and yet it totally isn't, it really is a film all of it's own with such a unique sense of humor and quirks that really took me off my guard in the opening scenes. The fact that this high school not only has the most wise ass and hilarious staff I've ever seen in my life, but also has and I kid you not, various clicks of students that include coffee addicts, cowboys, and white kids heavy into the reggae and love Bob Marley. Whaaaat?? This is the most fascinating school I've ever seen in film! It was really damn funny too, and it doesn't feel dated at all I mean I was wondering if this came out before or after A Knight's Tale, I thought it was that recent! And the characters I like to, I must really give the film some praise that there are the usual roles of your standard high school movie, you got the geeks, the popular girls, the jocks, and the rebels however each main character in those categories aside from the jocks who are still massive braying jackasses all have time devoted to them and we learn more about them. It's not a Mean Girls situation where every popular chick is the spawn of Beelzebub himself, and the geeks aren't just technically spoken awkward guys who need some sex, and the rebels aren't just people trying to throw it on the ground and proclaim they're not part of this system but the movie shows them as people both good and horrible. And I'm not gonna lie, Heath Ledger is pretty spectacular in this movie, he has such charisma and charm, I mean no wonder people loved him so much, I was practically man crushing hard on him. It shows he could do pretty much any role and is further testament as to why people still talk about his performances to this day. Julia Stiles is wonderful and actually has some great material to work with and she nails it! My boy Joseph Gordon Levitt being a big smoothie in this movie too, so that's two Gotham boys in search of romance. I think I especially like Larisa Oleynik as the uppity popular sister probably because she's way more than that, yes she's a royal pain, yes she's kinda spoiled and waaaay too self-centered, but it shows a lot more of her actual character that further drives my point of the characters being like real people, maybe not my favorite character but I was very pleased the way they handled her. I also really loved, what I personally think is the meaning of the movie, this one scene where our main girl and guy basically say that you should live the life that you want, and to not let anyone try to tell you who you are supposed to be. There's great wisdom in that scene for every age group out there and really should be seen at least once. The soundtrack was also not half bad, in fact I really digged the soundtrack for the most part, with a pretty grand singing scene with Heath thrown in. And that's why I loved it so much, this movie can take some pretty out there steps and creates this bizarre, funny, and very no frills world and yet have people act like real people. I really enjoyed this movie, it was highly entertaining, great fun to reminisce, and very funny. You should absolutely check this one out. I totally had friends like our main girl and guy Kat and Patrick, which is funny because I was the most vanilla good kid you could possibly ever see and yet I had friends who smoked pot, and sometimes drank, and were completely doing their own thing but still were like the punk group of the school and I really wouldn't want anything different. I couldn't even count how many times me and my friends would utterly bitch each other out and hate each other but 5 minutes later we get over and hang out again, very much like our main couple. It's still very identifiable to this day, and while high school wasn't even close to what you see in the movies for me, I still like to think it was a very good experience. Even if I didn't go to prom or get a girlfriend. And before I go have an emotional episode that's all for today. Until tomorrow!