...and twice on Sunday.

Wow, two posts from me today. Lucky you.

You know, I've noticed there are two things in abundance near my new place in Medford. When I'm walking around I see a lot of churches and dentists. When I figure out what this means, I'll let you know.
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Speaking of dentists. I can't imagine that anyone that does dental cleanings for a living would ever want to kiss another human being ever! I mean, I take decent care of my teeth. I could be better, I'm sure, but I sure as hell could be worse. But whenever I go to the dentist for my cleaning, they always manage to pull the foulest muck out of there. Honestly, if I had to see that day after day, I'd probably start thinking of abstinence. Or as a wise fictional man once said: "That's why I never kiss them on the mouth."
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About that TV situation mentioned in the post below.... I came back from the movies today, after ordering the TV, and had a mesage from Amazon sayinbg they couldn't complete the transaction with the seller, so it was voided. Huh? I went and checked and the two other TVs at that price were gone. No $400 Panasonic 32" LCD HD TV for me. It just sounds really sketchy. Of course that didn't stop me from instead buying a Olevia (never heard of them) 27" LCD HD TV for me. I'll give it one more shot. Why not.
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Did you say movie? you ask.

Yes, yes I did.

Does that mean there's a review? you wonder.

Why, yes. Yes there is.

At the end of Broken Flowers, the couple sitting next to me turned and asked me what I thought. I gave it a second and said: "I don't know."

She said: "I thought it was terrible."

This, of course, was not as funny as the time I saw Stargate, and as soon as the credits started rolling, the guy in front of me busted out with: "Well, that sucked!" But after some thought, I definitely saw this woman's point. And while I didn't find it terrible, I definitely found it lacking.

Actually, lacking is a good word for this film. Because it wasn't anything that the film had that was the problem, it's what it didn't.

Such as resolution. Context. Meaning.

Now I'm not such a stickler that I think allmovies should ahve these things. But Broken Flowers in particular I feel could have benefitted from some of these things.

Bill Murray plays Don Johnstone (and yes, that was mined for laughs a few times), an aging Don Juan who appears to have left in his trail a string of failed relationships. In fact, the film opens as his current lil' lady is leaving him. He recieves an unsigned letter from an old flame informing him that 20 years ago she gave birth to his son, but never told him, and that this son had left on a road trip trying to find his father. Johnstone, with the help of his mystery loving neighbor Winston, makes a list of 5 women that it could possibly be, and goes on a trip to visit them all to find out who the mother is.

Sounds like a decent enough plot, and Murray has been doing excellent work these past few years, so I was excited.

Unfortunately the film gets no better than that description. Murray visits four women, and the grave of a fifth, in his search. And while there's tons of meaning in these exchanges, unfortunately there so poorly developed, or perhaps SOOO subtly presented, that it's almost impossible to grasp that meaning. The problem here is one of context. We're never given any context as to what their relationships were like in the past, so the dynamics between the characters now is difficult, at best, to grasp. In meeting the real estate agent, Dora, (played by Frances Conroy who I just adore from Six Feet Under), we can tell there's a lot of tension in the room between them, but we have no idea why. The scenes with Laura (Sharon Stone), the recently widowed old flame, are much more comfortable. So much so that there's absolutely no surprise that they wake up in bed together the next morning. (The scenes with Laura's very young and very firtatous, and in one scene in particular very full frontally naked, are a lot less comfortable. The daughter's name: very aptly and very ridiculously: Lolita. For a film that was as subtle and minimalistic in every other facet, this was as subtle as a screwdriver to the face, and about as necessary.) In fact, only with one of the women, the white trash Penny (Tilda Swinton), do we get any glimpse of what their relationship had been like. And even that was only in the form of Murray saying" You left me." This being right before Penny's biker boyfriend starts knuckling down on Murray's face.

By the end of the film, Murray's search has yielded no answers. None of the women he visited appeared to be the mother of his child. Murray returns home, and here he encounters a young man, who just may be the son in question. In a scene outside a diner, where Murray had bought the lad some lunch, there's a conversation where Murray is trying to sound the boy out as to if it may be his son. It ends badly when Murray just out and says he knows the kid thinks he's his father. THe kid freaks and runs off, but we don't know whether it was because he didn't think that, and in fact was just a drifter, or if it was because he did indeed think that and couldn't deal.

Essentially, that's where the movie ended. No resolution whatsoever. Now I can be willing to forgive that---I like some ambiguity---IF there's something in place if it. Like, say, some noticeable growth in the character. Say, hypothetically, if the movie was supposed to be more about Murray's journey than the actual destination. However, that didn't seem the case. Murray's Johnstone, after minute 100 seemed to be the same Johnstone he was in minute 1.

And therein lay the problem. I left the movie with nothing to grasp on to. I feel like I was dropped into a couple of days of someone's life, and yes, life may not have definitive moments and marked instances of growth and such, but movies aren't life. If youre going to want to keep me coming back Mr. Jim Jamrusch, give me something that I can walk away with. Otherwise it's just 100 minutes of hot air and fluff, and I don't feel the need to buy that more than once.