MaestroReviews

Deb and I are artists, painters actually. We go see films as often as once a week. That's right, we go to the theater and sit in a dark room with strangers to see movies. We rarely rent. We like "little" movies, foreign and documentary films. We try to stay away from mainstream and blockbusters whenever possible, but a couple sneak in each year. We seek out the obscure. We try to avoid violent movies, and that really limits our choices, most film makers seem to think violence makes a story interesting.
I try not to give anything away in the reviews, but offer an honest reaction.
We rate them 1~10, 10 being highest.

Friday, August 16, 2013

The Spectacular Now

Deb 10     Me 9

Really a neat little movie. Again, some of these young actors blow me away. The young folks here are high school age so not really that young, but they do a great job. Now older, Jenifer Jason Leigh does a great job in the short time she is on screen. Its sort of a coming of age movie, but deals with specific issues. Both protagonist have the same hole in their family tree but fill it in different ways, with different attitudes and goals. One of the players is trapped in the idea of living in the now while most everyone else plans for a future. 
There are a lot of themes here that are dear to my heart so I dug seeing them presented from an outsider point of view. When I was a kid I read every Nietzsche book I could find and found a central or recurring theme of self-overcoming. Perhaps if I read other books I'd find it there too, but you find that in a lot of movies, sometimes overt, sometimes presented in subtle ways. You can find it here too and if its a theme you like, you might like this movie. There are holes, it aint perfect, but very well done and interesting. I had to pee from the get go and never found a spot in the movie that would allow me to be torn away from the screen for even a minute.

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