Day 191: Horrible Bosses

Three guys really hate their bosses and decide to kill them.

They’re totally clueless and racist, thinking they can walk into a bar full of black people and hire someone to kill their bosses. After failing to get a hitman, they decide to just do it themselves but they balls that up too. I can’t even find the energy to write about the film, it’s just not that interesting and I didn’t really find it all that funny. It wasn’t an awful film but I wouldn’t watch it again. The bloopers were funnier than the film itself.

5/10

Day 190: Detachment

A substitute teacher tries to stress to his class the importance of thinking for themselves. And a failing school is plagued by loneliness and struggle.

Each of the characters feel alone and undervalued and they’re aware that it’s unlikely to change. Meredith (Betty Kaye) is a student and she’s quite creative but her father dismisses her photography and wants her to work harder and lose weight. After a few of Henry’s (Adrien Brody) lessons, she wants to open up to him and share how she’s feeling. But she can’t and she eventually kills herself at school. There’s no one she can talk to and she can see no way out of how she’s feeling. The film uses parents’ night to hammer home the absence of parents in the lives of the children; not a single parent shows up for it. If they’re not willing to make the effort to hear about how their children are doing in school then they’re clearly failing to take an interest at home. Teachers can only do so much, children need their parents to play an active role in their lives.  

Henry meets a very young prostitute and he lets her stay in his house. He cares for her without being condescending and she comes to be less aggressive and more trusting. They buy each other gifts and make breakfast for each other and they grow quite comfortable together. But Henry has difficulty forming any kind of attachment and he knows she can’t stay with him forever, so he phones a foster care facility to come and take her away. She’s devastated, as is he, but it seems like it was good for her.

In class, Henry stresses that the kids have to think for themselves and to form their own opinions. To rely only on what you’ve been told for your understanding of the world is to become insignificant. You have to question everything and read as much as you can. The teachers aren’t to blame for what goes on in schools, they’re just doing the best they can with what they’ve got. There needs to be more freedom for expression so that the kids can find out who they are. I understand there has to be some rigidity in the curriculum but if you make every student learn the same things in the same way with no allowances for individuality then you end up with children who have no interest in what they’re learning. And in fact, I’d say they’re not learning anything, they’re just memorising enough to pass exams. There’s too much importance placed on grades and not enough placed on learning, so all the joy goes out of it and that’s why you end up with so many young people killing themselves over exams.

Really liked this film and how it highlighted the loneliness and insignificance felt (at some time or another) by everyone.

8/10

Day 189: Pooh's Heffalump Movie

The gang decide to capture a heffalump but tell Roo that he can’t come with them because it’s too dangerous. Roo wants to be treated like a grown up so he takes off to capture a heffalump all by himself.

Much like with every Pooh film, there’s something to be learned. The gang only know terrible things about heffalumps and they think they’ve even got horns. The heffalumps have heard of Pooh and the rest and have also only heard bad things. Both sides are scared of each other but after spending some time together they realise there’s nothing to be scared about. Forget what you’re told and take people as you meet them.

I’d forgotten how much I love Winnie the Pooh, although I do wish I’d watched the one where they try and save Christopher Robin from being trapped in a skull. Eeyore was not in this enough. He’s my favourite.

7/10

Day 188: Mean Creek

Five kids decide to play a prank on a bully but it gets out of hand and they must decide what they’re going to do.

The bully, George (Josh Peck), beats up Sam (Rory Culkin), and it seems to be a regular occurrence. In order to get back at him, Sam’s brother and some of his friends decide to play a prank on George. They invite him out for Sam’s birthday and they go out on a boat. The plan is to play Truth or Dare and eventually dare George to strip and jump in the river, at which time they’d take off and he’d have to run home naked. But once they actually get to talking to George, most of them end up seeing that he’s not all bad. He has his problems and it’s clear he just wants friends. They want to go back on the plan but Marty (Scott Mechlowicz) wants to stick with it. It eventually leads to a fight on the boat and George provokes Marty by talking about his father who killed himself. He just keeps pushing and pushing and so Sam’s brother knocks him overboard to make him stop. Then I’m not really sure what happened. It looked like he couldn’t swim and then he hit his head. They try to save him but it’s too late. They’re all involved because they planned this and they all played the game despite knowing how it was going to end. Marty takes charge and says they need to bury him and act like nothing happened. They do it and take off home but the rest of them can’t let it go and so they decide to come clean.

Trying to get back at the bully isn’t a bad thing in itself. Sure, it doesn’t really achieve anything but if you’ve been bullied, it can help you feel not quite so helpless. And the prank itself wasn’t exactly that awful. They could’ve decided to hurt him rather than just embarrass him, so I think it was a relatively tame prank. It was good to see the side to George that explained his behaviour and the effect it had on the kids. It made sense that they’d not want to go through with the plan after getting to know him a bit and, after he makes aggressive comments, it makes sense that they’d want to play the game after all. They understand why he does what he does but the comments still hurt and they want to get back at him. If he’d been saying those things to me, I’m not sure I’d be able to stop myself from pushing him in the river too. I think it’s interesting that even though we can understand why someone would act a certain way, we’re still hurt by it.

7/10

Day 187: Run Lola Run

Lola’s (Franka Potente) boyfriend needs 100,000 Deutschmarks in 20 minutes or he’ll be killed. She runs off and does her best to get him the money in time.

We’re given three versions of what could happen during those 20 minutes. As Lola is running past various people we see snapshots of their future. In the different versions, she meets them in slightly different ways (bumps into them in one but just misses them in another, for example) and so the snapshots of the future are not the same. This seemingly minor encounter with a running stranger has an effect on the people's lives, even if it would seem ridiculous to think it would be significant. The point being here that our interactions with others can have consequences that would’ve been impossible to foresee. We don’t know how our behaviour will affect other people and so it’s important to be aware of that, I’d say. Obviously you can’t be completely aware of everything but I think we could all do with being a little bit more considerate (just a generalisation there, maybe some of you are super considerate already?). When people are scared or upset or annoyed they have the tendency to try and lash out and cause the most damage. You can’t take back something once you’ve said it and you can’t ever go back to a time when you didn’t say it. And it’s rarely ever worth saying. There's a line from 'The God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy which I think fits here, "That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less." 

I really love this film. It’s so trippy and disorientating. The fast pacing, flashing images, interesting music, and shock scenes all add up to a great viewing experience. I always find it really interesting when you consider how things could’ve gone if you’d done something a little different, and so this film is perfect for that.

8/10

Day 186: ParaNorman

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) can talk to the dead and everyone in town finds him massively inconvenient. When an old curse threatens them all, he does his best to save them despite being terrified.

I always hate when people just dismiss bullying as something kids do and so it doesn't really need to be taken seriously. Norman was lonely and every day he had to deal with people making fun of him because of something he couldn't control. His family aren't supportive at all and he doesn't really have anyone to turn to. Even though he is the town outcast, he still does whatever he can to help them. I know he's not actually real but I really liked Norman. People can be so awful to each other but I like that some people don't let that stop them from doing good.

7/10

Day 185: Lilo & Stitch

An alien built to destroy crashes on Earth. He’s adopted by an orphaned little girl who is about to be taken away from her sister. Cry-fest.

Stitch just wants to belong somewhere. Lilo looks after him and won’t give him up and he realises that he belongs with her. He wants to have a family and now he has one. The film manages to be depressing, lovely and funny all at the same time and I love when films can do that. I’m really glad I finally watched it and I will definitely watch it again.

8/10