What the fuck, car?

Does it ever seem that once car troubles start happening, they just don't stop?

It started back around Christmas time when I had to have my catalytic converter replaced. In an odd problem, there was a sensor in the converter that had gone bad. That's not the odd part. The catalytic converter was covered by the waranty, but the sensor was not. To the tune of $800. Ouch. Merry Christmas, all.

A couple of months pass and I go to get an oil change. But they can't open the hood, because a cable in the hood mechanism snapped. Replacement, around $140.

Then my battery died about a month or so back. Replacement, approximately $100.

And now today, I'm driving to work, and feel a bump, like something hit the car. There are no other cars near me, so I figure maybe it was just a realy quick, strong gust of wind. Get to work and see that my back bumper on the driver's side rear panel is hanging off. (Note, I then remembered that this also happened Sunday night after the Black Crowes concert, but I thought I had fixed it.) It looks almost like someone had hit it at the show maybe. There's a slight crack in the plastic, and the bumper had separated from it's coupling on the body. I snapped it back into place, but I'm not sure how long it will hold. So, it will probably be back in the shop for another round of "more money than I can afford to spend" fun.

I'm having nightmare flashback to my last couple of cars now (not counting the Corolla.) Those other ones that spent more time in the shop than on the road. But if it starts to get that bad, I swear by all that's holy I'll sell the godamn thing and take the train.
...
So I saw Lady in the Water over the weekend. I needed to take some time before offering my opinion though, because I didn't know what my opinion was. For a film that seemed to polarize reviewers into loving it or hating it, I felt pretty much ambivalent about it.

But after a few days of thinking about it, I have to give it a thumbs down. Even realizing what M. Night was trying to do (create a fairy tale), and the storytelling rules that allows, this was a clumsy effort. Not only was there far too much exposition (which I can overlook in the right circumstances), but it was awkwardly done (which aren't those right circumstances.) And even when it wasn't clumsy, it was obvious.

There were some small positive things to hold on to, but in the end not enough to save the film. There were some good kernels of ideas that would have made for good building blocks towards something better, but they largely went unexplored. This would be an extremely difficult film to make under the best of circumstnces, and I can't help but feeling that M. Night's publicly known feuding with Disney affected the movie negatively, whether intentionally or not.

Ultimately, if you're going to try and like this film, it's a matter of acceptance. You have to accept what you're being told as easily as the residents of this Philadelphia apartment complex accept that there is a mythical creature living among them. And in the end, I just couldn't.