Category: Cody’s Reviews

A Review of a Review of ‘They Came Together’

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They Came Together (2014)
Directed by David Wain
Written by David Wain & Michael Showalter
83 min.

You don’t need a review from me of They Came Together—it’s great, it’s hilarious, go watch it. I saw it two nights ago and I plan to see it again pretty soon. It’s just too damn good.

Surprisingly, it has a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t mean that I was expecting it to have a higher rating—quite the opposite, since some of the cleverest and most subversive comedies of the last twenty years have very low ratings: Freddy Got Fingered, MacGruber, Hell Baby, The Brothers Solomon, The Goods, The Wrong Guy, Reno 911: Miami, Nacho Libre, even Step Brothers. The list goes on—those were just ones off the top of my head. Oh, and toss two of David Wain’s previous films on that list too, while you’re at it: Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten.

The culprit seems to be that most critics don’t try and understand comedies like they do dramas. It doesn’t occur to them that maybe the reason they’re not laughing isn’t because the jokes aren’t funny, but because they don’t get them. These hypocrites don’t see their own sense of humor as a brain muscle in need of toning, whereas they’ll spend their whole lives consciously strengthening their understanding of ‘mise en scéne’ or ‘auteurship’ or ‘symoblism’ or ‘dialectics’ or ‘semiotics’ or whatever.

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‘Glengarry Glen Ross’: Just Watch It Already

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A close friend of mine committed suicide this past Monday. Someone I loved dearly and always felt like family. The last time I saw her was about a year ago, and it was wonderful—we had a great time together. It was the most perfect last memory of her that I could ever ask for.

This review is for her. One of the many things we shared was a deep love for this movie. I can’t begin to make sense of her passing, but I can at least write this piece. She’d be pleased to know it was out there.

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A Review of the First 15 Minutes of ‘Joe’

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Joe (2013)
Directed by David Gordon Green
Screenplay by Gary Hawkins
Based on the novel by Larry Brown
117 min.

Spoiler-free.

I have a ’15-minute rule’ for whenever I watch a movie at home—if I’m not feeling it in the first 15 minutes, I turn it off and put something else on. This doesn’t always mean that I think the movie is bad—sometimes it just means I’m not in the mood for it, and as such, wouldn’t be able to judge it fairly. Some take issue with this rule, others see where I’m coming from, and that’s fine either way—it’s not something I’m particularly passionate about, it works for me, it’s whatever. Yesterday, for the first time, I felt actual guilt about it though.

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Gender is Queer: A Review of ‘Boy Meets Girl’

boymeetsgirl

Boy Meets Girl (2014)
Written and Directed by Eric Schaeffer
101 min.

Spoiler-free.

Gender is weird. Think about it: there’s two types of a being, and they have to come together in order to procreate. That’s just strange as hell. Like, why isn’t it that there’s just one type of being, and when it wants to make more beings, it just makes them? There’s probably some evolutionary reason for this I guess, like that sexual reproduction makes evolution faster because DNA recombines as opposed to asexual reproduction where DNA doesn’t recombine and thus evolution takes way longer (I checked Yahoo Answers) but still, it’s weird. I don’t care that it’s why we’re here and why we continue to be here—it just doesn’t jive with our modern minds, conceptually. We like things instant. It’s lame that I can’t just tell my body to make a baby and then a baby happens. Oh well, maybe in the next update.

It’s not just that we’re all a bunch of spoiled technobrats, though—love itself makes us realize how dumb gender is. People don’t fall in love with gender—we’re not a bunch of wandering automatons with procreation as our sole directive. We’re philosophical beings looking for a person that our soul gels with. The downside of that beautiful reality is that sometimes, said person isn’t someone we’re sexually attracted to—whatever, that’s what friends are for. Another downside is that maybe said person is someone you are sexually attracted to, but they are of a gender you are not used to being sexually attracted to. That can get messy.

Here’s the thing, though. There’s a point of time in everyone’s life—whether you’re gay, straight, or bi—where even the gender, or genders, that you are currently sexually attracted to, you weren’t used to being sexually attracted to, because you weren’t used to being sexually attracted to anyone at all. This period is called early adolescence, and everyone goes through it. And because everyone goes through it, everyone should be able to relate to this film, no matter what their sexual orientation.

On top of that, when you think about it, falling in love in general is like falling in love with a gender you’re not ready to fall in love with, because it’s always just that scary, and new, and strange, and confusing, even if you’ve fallen in love several times before. Eric Schaeffer understands this, and has imbued this seemingly specifically-themed film with universal themes. As a result, Boy Meets Girl transcends its Queer Cinema sub-genre and has more to say about love than the vast majority of romance movies.

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The We and the I: Michel Gondry’s Best Film Yet

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The We and the I (2012)
Directed by Michel Gondry
Written by Michel Gondry, Jeff Grimshaw, and Paul Proch
103 min.

Spoiler free.

It’s kinda unfair for me to call this his best film yet, because I haven’t seen every one of his films. Gondry is one of those directors where everyone knows his name, but few have seen more than a couple of his movies, and would be surprised to hear he’s made 10 in the last 13 years:

Human Nature (2001)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (2005)
The Science of Sleep (2006)
Be Kind Rewind (2008)
The Thorn in the Heart (2009)
The Green Hornet (2011)
The We and the I (2012)
Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? (2013)
Mood Indigo (2013)

I’ve seen almost all of them, though. The only one I haven’t seen is The Thorn in the Heart, not counting the two I can’t see, since they haven’t, as of yet, had much of a release: Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? and Mood Indigo.

All this to say, I’m at least more qualified than most to make this statement. Especially since I’ve even heard of this movie, which is an impressive feat in and of itself that sets me apart from everyone else on this planet.
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