2009 Best and Worst Movies…according to me. :)

BEST Movies

“Avatar”: This one really impressed me. But only visually. The dialogue was typical and the storyline bordered on “Fern Gully” and “Dances With Wolves”, but visually, it was stunning. I saw it in IMAX 3-D, and from what I’ve heard, that’s the ONLY way to see it. It’s James Cameron, which means it’s way too freaking long, but I still give it a B -.

“Harry Potter / Half Blood Prince”: Duh, Dumbledore died and it was great. Harry finally grew a pair and did something instead of whiny about his dead parents. And perhaps the best part for me was Hermoine getting tipsy on Butter beer. ….slut. 🙂 A-

“Coraline”: I love dark fairy-tales, they’re the only good ones. And this definitely has a creepy factor that I think kids should get accustomed to. B+

“The Hangover”: I rarely go to the moves and actually laugh, you know? But I did on this one. It’s definitly a tired plot though (Bachelor party gone bad? Please, who the hell can afford to go to Vegas and stay for two nights in a 5 star hotel? And strippers, and Coke?…in this economy?) But the sparks of humor came from not the main characters for me, but the supporting cast. Tyson’s cameo was actually good, and the Asian mob man was a hit, for me. The best actor though? That damn baby, and him getting hit by the car door. Worst part? Again, females are painted as being humor-less Ice Queens.  …. B+

“Orphan”: I expected a terrible B movie disguising itself for an A-List movie. Not the case…. seriously good and twisted. Ala ‘The Good Son’, it definitly reminds me to take my Birth Control, and that kids are not always as sweet as they seem. Also, the best part was the little girl. That little bitch was amazing. She learned how to master the Russian dialect and gives you a stony performance, and at one part, kind of a slutty one, that left even me uncomfortable. A-

“Inglorious Basterds”: Two words: Tarantino, motherfuckers. I had been waiting a long time to see this. Mixing two of my favorite things, World War Two, and Tarantino. Brad Pitt was funny, Diane Kruger did something besides look like she swallowed an Ecstasy tablet (like in ‘National Treasure’) and the ‘basterds’ were ruthless. A 🙂

“Paranormal Activity”: I don’t get scared of movies, okay? I really don’t. Last one to do so was “Night Of The Living Dead”…. and I was 8. Saw this on Opening Night, Midnight Showing, when it was only in 5 theaters across the country, so I was one of the first to see it. I had never even heard of it, but a friend mentioned it, and we were looking for a movie to catch, so we thought, why not? After some research and critics calling it “amazing”, I was not disappointed. I love seeing Indie movies do well, and this one definitely deserved to do well.  A

“Zombieland”: Woody Harrelson made that movie for me. His scenes with Bill Murray were great. But other than that….. Okay, I am so over this “Indie Boy” thing, okay? That boy who is kinda good looking, very shy and geeky, yet always managing to pull his shit together and get the bad-ass girl. Like, “Adventureland”, “Juno”, “Youth In Revolt”…. its like, enough already. I know if I was that chick, I’d search all over for another male survivor, because I would not hit that shit. Abagail Breslin was great too. B-

“Pirate Radio”: Phillip Seymour Hoffman is just a great fucking actor, homeboy was brilliant. And great performances by Nick Frost (‘Shaun Of The Dead’) and Chris O’Dowd (from U.K’s “IT Crowd”…. a sitcom you definitely need to see. ) I love 60’s stuff, and this made me laugh and at one point tear up. Awesome. A

Also some good ones, but not BEST, were: “The Road”, “Sherlock Holmes”, “Invention Of Lying,” and you need to see “Capitalism: A Love Story”….it’ll make you so damn mad.

WORST Movies:

“Adventureland”: Again, the whole “Indie Shy Boy” thing, just annoys the hell out of me. Enough already. Bring back asshole jocks who beat the shit out of kids like them, ugh, please. Also along the same lines, “500 days Of Summer”…another chick who looks like falling in love with these guys is along the same lines of a root canal. F

“Public Enemies”: It’s okay, Johnny Depp, we all pick shitty scripts sometimes. Hell, I did ‘Frog & Toad”, okay? Long-winded, annoying, dull, and having literally no climax, it reminded me of sex with an ex-boyfriend I used to have. -D

“Fame:” No, you are NOT going to live forever. You are going to go to New York and wait tables, sleep with a smack dealer, start turning tricks, get pregnant and actually have it, and hopefully after years of night-school, become a paralegal. Or, you’ll move to Hollywood, do the same except you’ll meet a rich old guy, get tit implants and have kids you never see. Cheers. F

“New Moon”: Come on, you knew I was going to attack it, don’t act surprised. Okay, I get why girls like it, I really do. Hot guy with super-powers rescuing a (sorta) ugly girl (with an over-bite) from her boring life, and giving her everything she wants and needs (except orgasms). But I just don’t get it, okay? I know it’s for teens, but I don’t understand why this movie is trying so hard to be pious. WILL THEY JUST HAVE SEX ALREADY?! If I was Edward Cullen, and Bella was not giving it up, I’d let the Voulturi have her ass, screw it. I miss the days of vampires eating you, sleeping during the day, being allergic to Christians, and frankly, fucking a bitch up. I just don’t get the whole sparkling flesh, being able to walk around in the daylight, posing as high-school students (just say your damn parents home-school you, shit) and somehow having a shit-ton of money. (I know the dad’s a doctor, but not every doctor makes that much money….lord.) C-

“Did You Hear About The Morgans?”: Yes, and I wish I hadn’t. ….trite. And Sarah Jessica Parker? Just get Botox like a normal fucking person, please. No way would Hugh Grant be banging you in real life. D

“The Ugly Truth”: I weep for this, I really do. As a woman, I am so sick of these things. It’s 2010, don’t you think we’ve figured out the whole “Men are mysteries, women are not” thing? We’re really not that different, women and man, we’re not. But the tired old jokes as men being these ravenous sex creatures all about sex, sports, and carnage; and women being these lovely creatures obsessed with organization, fashion, and trying to figure out everything, are just that, tired. I’m a chick, and I like sex, sports, carnage. But I also love fashion and organization. So I’m over Hollywood trying to make money off of nuerotic women this way. Do it the normal way and make us feel insecure about our bodies. D

Push

“Look at what the honey gave to you,” she said to me. “It gave you sweets and good time.” By I didn’t get anything sweet out of the honey, I argue. She tells me it’s because I don’t have no taste buds now that I’ve done so much damage to my own body. She rolls up the blinds and asks me what it is I think that the sun gives to me. I reply with “headache.” She rolls her eyes and cross the apartment to the small kitchen. She turns the sink knobs and water comes reluctantly rushing out. “What does water give to you?” I think for a minute. Not for my answer, but for what she’ll want to hear. I reply with “calm”. She whacks me across the face with the back of her right hand. From the floor I landed on, I see her run water over a green washcloth, ring it out, and then she throws it at me. “Right.” She says smiling, and then walking away.

Before I did all that damage to myself, I lived in the third floor apartment of that pink house on Van Zandt street. I had my own tiny kitchen, and I’d do all of the damage to myself on the sun porch, but at night. While the rest of the world slept, I’d stay up all night. Shooting for the stars, alone. And sailing in the moon’s light ocean, with my friends, imaginary and cupid dodging the rocks.  My bedroom was the greenish color of french mustard, and the stucco on the walls was fun to run my hands over when I was high.

Whatever.

The people at the center said I was in need of a tough love rehabiliation, and I told them “Whatever”. They signed their signatures on some paper that detailed my life and story and soon She was knocking me around and asking me questions about plants and auras. A bad chakra, or something about no sympathy. I eat a lot of fucking rice here too, and no meat. Even though She tells me I need to gain weight because I was “so hell-bent on wasting away to the nothing I was inside,” I can’t eat anything that will get me fat. And She plays the viola all damn night, and I can’t sleep, until she stops and switches to the piano.   She wakes me up around noon every day and makes me run on the beach, promising me a gluttonus lunch afterwards. The lunch is an apple and a half block of cheese. I inhale it. “See how good that tastes? Do you want to eat all of the time now? Not just starve yourself?” She demands of me. I nod in between bites, and She cracks a smile.  Her television set has a mannequin head in it instead of a glass screen. The head is missing an ear and I think of Mr. Potato Head, and then I think of potatos and then I get hungry, and I let out a small sigh. “Shut up.” She says. “If I hear you feel sorry for yourself one more fucking time, I swear to god I’ll feed you dust.”

We’re in her car. It is a nice car, a hybrid, and she rolls the windows down as we turn left and head into a part of town I hadn’t been to before. Some little kids are playing in the street with old bikes and Barbie dolls with no heads. I see an old lady pushing a cart with garbage in it. “You’re pretty much like what’s in that cart, don’t you think?” She asks me. I nod yes. “Maybe you could get out and help that woman push her mini-You around.” She tells me as she pulls over. I stare at her as she turns off the car. “Go.” So I go, and the air in this neighborhood does seems thicker and harder to breathe in. The old woman looks at me, and I see the cataracts in her eyes. I ask her if she needs help and she does not respond. I ask again, she nods. She tells me she is only going up the block to St. Luke’s for the soup kitchen. I nod and start pushing, and she follows me, telling me not to let anything spill out of the cart. Inside is indeed garbage. Old soda bottles filled with piss, a tattered Bible that she had drawn in with a blue crayon, and rags of fabric. As I turn the corner, an ancient disposable camera falls from the cart and the old woman let’s out a wail. “Stop! Stop! You’re letting it all out!” She swoops down faster than I thought she could and retrieves it, she cradles it in her hands. She looks terrified, as if I may have broken something like the solar system or the delicate balance that is home. “I’ll do the rest, go home now.” She tells me, with little tears in her eyes. I tell her I’m sorry and don’t mind helping her to St. Luke’s, but she wipes her nose and shakes her head. “I don’t want your help anymore, I just want you to gone now. You’ll break it all next time.” She pushes her cart and disappears behind a house.

She is leaning up against her car waiting for me. She looks right through me and I know she’s trying to read me in everyway that she can. “I know.” is all I say. She cracks a small smile. “It’s amazing how much people care about garbage, isn’t it?” She asks me and I nod. “Get in the car.” And I do.

She made steak that night and told me I was delicate.

Daddy

I only see you in my dreams now, lately they’ve been frequent. For awhile it was crowded restaurants and department stores. I think you appear to me as road sign most of the time. I think it’s to warn me, letting me know something. Then where are you now? I’ve never been so confused, I’ve never felt so lost, except for the day you left.

I lost my best friend Daddy. At first it was because I could’nt do anything right, and I was a bad woman. And now it’s because we the twins are both leaving that polluted womb where we’ve been stunted for years. Everyone looks at me wierd because I still have him close to me, but he knew you. He knows my secrets, he loves my art. No one else does. I’m in this new place where things are going right, and I’m being able to explore it and myself. But I can’t. I just sit back and wait for the other shoe to drop. every meal I eat, I feel guilty. Everything good thing he gets for me, I feel bad.

I said I needed to join the Navy to find myself and do something for myself. But could’nt I do that right here?…and in better clothes? But do I really want that? WHo knows what I want. I know it’s for the best, I really do. It’s the most unselfish thing to do.

World of HerCraft (pt. 1…?)

Brie looked over her shoulder at the small clock on the nightstand. They had missed their dinner reservations by an hour and a half. She didn’t have another fight in her, she didn’t have another insult to throw away on someone who wouldn’t even understand. And so, for that very reason, instead of hurling a ball of flames at her husband Jonathan, Brie just went into her walk-in closet, and removed the dress she had spent half a paycheck on, from her slender frame. She let it fall to the floor, and stared at the swirls of the black satin dress, snaking around her ankles. She looked like she was standing in a puddle of ink, and she was the quill tip. Brie picked it up and placed it on an empty hanger, dressed in a pair of running shorts and a tank top, and went out to the living room.  She opened her sketchbook, and sat on the couch behind Jonathan. She fixated her gaze on the lines of his back, the twist of his neck, and allowed herself to go into ehr aesthetic mode, and began to move her hands in the paths of great charcoal. Jonathan was on floor, resembling at his best a five year old on saturday mornings, glued to the television and awaiting some maternal figure to bring him coco krisps. Or at the worst he resembled a sheltered man, who stayed at home  and jacked of to an ecclectic mixture of kiddie porn and the kind where the women are fairy / vampire hybrids. He was wearing that fucking headset again. The one which allowed him to yell at other players in the game, mostly teenage boys in Iowa who were sneaking in a game after homework and before bed. Jonathan was never really like this until a few months ago when he took that new job. All the guys at his job were into this stupid game, and slowly but surely, he joined them. Now it ran their lives. They left family dinners at her in-laws early, because a huge online tournament was going on. They skipped out on little things, so he could save up money for more Xbox Live points. “More points, more things I can get, baby.” He said to her one time when she pointed out a new dish set they really needed.

They were using paper plates now. One of the final straws was when Brie came home from a three day weekend visiting her sister a few states away. Jonathan had a yard sale, and sold their wedding china, a Chippendale desk his grandfather willed to him, and their DVD collection. “I don’t write, we never watch movies, and paper plates are just fine to eat off of!” He exclaimed. “Look, I know it’s a shock, but, hey, with some of the profits, I’ll take you to the movies. That one you’ve been dying to see.” The night the alleged movie was to take place, there was also a tournament, so there was no said movie.  Brie went with Seth instead.

Reciting

There came a great pain of satisfaction when sitting in a dim room. Preparing your mind for sex, since your body had became so numb to it.  Tugging at the strand of blue beads around your neck, your heart rate quickened and your arms became clammy. “Call it a late birthday present,” he told you when you opened the small jewelry box and saw the strand of beads. They were beautiful, but not your style at all. Fucking Hippie shit with no metal clasp, and they hung low, past your tits, getting snagged on everything. He did’nt understand your style, if you even had one left. Take and take from magazine articles, phony, bullshit, beautiful.

You had met him at a museum, nevermind which one exactly, it didn’t matter. I think it was a science museum, because you had mentioned something about atoms and neutrons, and his face near the planetarium. He was there waiting for his buddy Thomas, who worked there, and was getting off of his shift at four; they were going to have some drinks. You wore a blue sweater coat that went to your ankles, lightly touching the ground. It hung lossley over your frame, which had become so tiny at that point. Over the frame, was the cream, flesh colored slip dress, and your shoes were…well, I can’t recall. Why were you even at the museum? You hate science, you said it reminded you of math, you hate math. I suposse it was to get out of the house, to get away from. I was’nt workign at the time, and I was sitting around the house whining and moping. I would’ve wanted to be away from me too.

“Hi, I’m Declan.” You turned from some exhibit on Saturn’s rings and you saw him. Six foot four infidel with hazel eyes, bleached hair almost white, no blemishes, no flaws. You thought he looked super-human. You’re so damn different from him. You’re 5’6, small, but with hips so wide I would love grabbing them when had sex. Your hair is always a mess, and you’re eyes are so dark, I can’t see anything else half of the time. You wondered why he was talking to you. You always thought of yourself as ugly, unworthy, and distant from the rest of the human race. You told him your name, he smiled. He asked you if you wanted to get a drink with him and Thomas. You asked him if he had plans to kidnap you and put you ina sex slave trade. “That’s funny!” He said. You finally smiled back, and accepted his offer.

He didn’t have any bad plans for you. Apparently I’m not the only one who thought you were beautiful.