So I Watched The Interview...

Man, this was a weird movie.

If you don't know by now (where have you been??), The Interview is the comedy about the attempted assassination of current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. It embodies a very common American sentiment of late, and one that no one has really been particularly shy about articulating in the media or elsewhere... However, for whatever reason this intentionally stupid comedy of all things managed to gain the attention and ire of the dictator himself.

So a lot of really pointless questions come to mind about whether or not the film was worth it... or whether or not free speech has come into question in our country (SPOILER: IT HASN'T). But then there is a more direct question to be asked. Did this movie even remotely deserve the attention it wound up getting because of this whole "mess?" I gotta say, it didn't. Sure I laughed a little here and there... and the film even managed to make me think it was gonna make a real point about halfway through... before it totally decimated that point and threw all of its cards on the table in an attempt to force its audience to feel like 52 card pickup was actually a fun way to pass the time.

Seth Rogen and James Franco are a couple of fun and funny guys. But the more they do films together, the less the overall content of said film seems to matter. This Is The End was a surprisingly good time... but I don't think I'd call it a good movie... and I definitely did not enjoy it as much as  their first endeavour, Pineapple Express. Well The Interview is an additional step down even from that. It's clumsy and poorly paced. And unfortunately, the relevancy it found in the one scene where Sook (Diana Bang) speaks out against murder in the name of change was almost immediately ruined by the events that followed. But perhaps that's just me. It seems Rogen and Franco really would prefer to just make action movies. They keep claiming these are comedies, but I'm starting to think as time goes by that that just isn't true.

The Interview is an intentionally stupid film. But under the surface of that, it is unintentionally even dumber. And while I admire the filmmakers' attempts at the very end to "tie everything together" this film as a whole just doesn't work. It's a bad idea made worse by poor planning... and it's really not worth your time or money. Oh well.

Attempting, Desperately, To Understand Palo Alto

Do you like to be depressed? Do you like watching modern angsty teens being depressed and making only bad decisions? If you said yes to either of these questions, you'll probably like Palo Alto.

And the weird thing is, I think I do... like this movie. Because for some reason it hit me over the head just enough to make my problems not feel so bad. Oh I was still depressed walking out of the theatre, but at least I felt like the movie was sort of holding my hand and saying "It's alright dude... this shit happens to everybody." To which I responded "I don't actually think that shit happens to everybody, but I sure am glad it isn't happening to me... so thanks for the reminder."

Palo Alto is a film based on a James Franco novel (??) based on some of his experiences having grown up in... Palo Alto. It rings of incredibly interesting half truths, all of which are interesting sheerly from a living legend perspective. But in the end, most of this feels like a much larger collection of people being skimmed down and combined to make one movie where we could connect with just a few. This is not a negative thing, just a great deal of this feels like hearsay rather than actual events from one person's life. Like, "Did you hear what happened to that girl over in West Glen? She had an affair with her teacher." or "I heard Johnny and Tray cut down a protected tree last week." "No way!" You know, stuff like that. But I might be wrong, maybe James Franco was a part of all of this in his own right. I just wonder where he fits in.

That being said, the movie does carry weight... moral and thematic. It moves and I never found myself getting bored. I was too busy getting angry at the characters' poor decision making to get bored. Palo Alto has a feeling to it. Both pessimistic and malevolently beautiful. And I'm not lying when I say only one positive thing happens in the entire movie and it's only positive because it escapes the most sinister and negative thing that happens in the movie. Cryptic, I know, but I guess for some reason I think I want more people to see this movie. So I wanna leave some mystery.

Jack Kilmer (Val's son) does an excellent job here. To me he kind of evokes a darker version of the kid from Almost Famous in a muuuch darker movie. Emma Roberts was borderline perfect as an awkward girl trying to get a sense of herself in a really messy world. Her relationships with her mother, her teacher, her guidance councilor, and her classmates all blend together in this weird hodgepodge mess of a young life. Though it's not without hope, she definitely has a way to go before she starts making good choices. Nat Wolff was fun to watch. He just kept on doing things. He couldn't control himself and that was kind of perfect for the role.

I also really liked Zoe Levin in this one. She had an energy that felt real and consistent. She seemed to not care, but then showed her wounds when it mattered most. And yes, James Franco shows up. He doesn't do a lot, but he's there. It's weird to see him in this older role when there's probably a version of himself written into the other younger characters.

There are a few non sequiturs, like a scene of weird narration that evokes an emotional response but doesn't actually connect back to anything we see on film... and well the ending of the film just kind of happens which I've become more and more okay with as the day has passed. But it is still weird to catch a movie doing this and not really being given a reason why.

Palo Alto is a thoroughly depressing and absolutely cathartic experience. But somehow it's not at all a bad movie. This is Gia Coppola's first writing/directing credit. So I'm hoping to see what else she has to offer in the future.