I can't remember the last time I saw two movies back to back in a theater, I can guarantee that it was some time during the last millennium.
Feeling like a movie last night I had planned to go into town to see Crazy Stupid Love but I decided to check what was playing in Waterton just in case and it just so happened that it was showing there too. However it was the late show with Midnight in Paris playing at 7:00. I checked with IMDb and it seemed like MiP might be a good bet as well so I decided to make an evening of it and see both of them. I would put up with the uncomfortable seats, the small screen, the dim and flickering picture and non sloped floor which means the bottom fifth of the screen will always have a few heads poking up into it in front of you. I looked forward to once again visiting an antique theater, to buying my tickets at an outdoor ticket booth, to a cozy room with character and an inconvenient but welcome absence of cup holders.
*****
The first Woody Allen movie I ever saw was Radio Days which I saw in the theater in 1987. I remember quite liking it even though the style was very different from the kinds of movies I was used to seeing. That first positive exposure led me to later see Annie Hall as well as Hannah and Her Sisters. Now, I'm no expert and am certainly not a Woody Allen expert but I think it's probably safe to say that he feels nostalgic about earlier times and maybe even wishes that he'd been born several years or even decades sooner.
Midnight in Paris stars Owen Wilson, the always lovely Rachel McAdams, the obligatory (hey it's in Paris) but perfect Marion Cotillard and a bunch of other great names. Hey it's even got that head Volturi vampire from twilight, Michael Sheen. However in this movie he is much less powerful although he still thinks he knows everything.
Owen Wilson's character (Gil) is engaged to Rachel McAdams' character (Inez). He is a writer who owns a nostalgia shop in Hollywood. He is working on a novel but makes most of his living by writing movie scripts. Gil and Inez tag along with her parents on a business trip to Paris. Inez and her parents are conservatives and so of course are portrayed as these horrid monsters. The mother is particularly laughably evil in every way that liberal parents surely warn their children about every night when they tuck them into bed. Really though, at this point, I've come to expect and dismiss all the blatant liberal propaganda in movies. That's just how they roll and we must endure it if we are to watch any movies at all. I don't think I can recall a single line of dialogue originating from Inez or either of her parents that would give me any reason to understand how Gil could possibly be engaged to her. It's a good thing she looks so much like Rachel McAdams because she and her parents are truly heinous.
Midnight in Paris is of course a dialogue driven movie. Lots of talking and a complete and inconsiderate lack of gunfire or car chases. It kind of reminded me a little of a pair of Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy films called Before Sunrise and Before Sunset which were set in Vienna and Paris respectively. In fact a certain bookstore appears in both Before Sunset and Midnight in Paris. And all this time I had imagined it to be just another pretend store made up and built for a film. It's called Shakespeare and Company, and here it is.
I also saw faint shades of Somewhere in Time in Midnight in Paris. Just because Gil's longing for an earlier time ends up actually taking him there but I guess that's all I should mention about that.
In the end Midnight in Paris shows us that feeling nostalgic for an earlier time is a fairly natural and common feeling that many people deal with or maybe don't deal with as well as they should. Of course things were different back then but they probably weren't as great as the imagined reality we create in our minds. It's more important to focus on our own time and live our own lives.
Along with the nice little life lesson Midnight in Paris provides a lot of laughs, some smart dialogue and some good fun. I just wish I'd looked up the word pedantic before I watched it. 8/10
*****
Crazy Stupid Love is the movie I had originally wanted to see but after watching Midnight in Paris I was sure it would be the lesser of the two. I am usually wary of mainstream Hollywood comedies (I admit I haven't seen either of the Hangover movies) especially ones that supposedly involve "romance." CSL though has three things going for it from the start though. Those being, the always awesome Ryan Gosling, the irresistible Emma Stone and Steve Carell (yeah he's good too).
CSL is directed by Glen Ficarra and John Requa who wrote Bad Santa which as you may or may not know is not your average Christmas movie. It is quite a dark comedy which is funny and a bit shocking which you would expect but it's also honest and poignant at the same time which is a more rare achievment I think.
Ryan Gosling is perfect as the gifted pick up artist, Jacob (yeah another Jcub who is always trying to steal other guy's girls) who always has the perfect comeback to anything a girl says. He sees Cal (Steve Carell) at a bar moping over the loss of his wife, who wants a divorce, and decides to teach him how to be just like him.
Changes are made, transformations take place but not all changes happen where you usually expect in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Sure CSL has many of the same funnies that you will find elswhere but it also has that little bit extra, that intangible "it" factor that sets it above the rest, kind of like Emma Stone. 7.9/10
At the end of the evening I was glad I'd seen both movies. Quite different from each other but both satisfying. I will see them again when they come out on DVD later this year.
Near midnight as I drove home from Waterton under a clear moonless sky I stopped at a roadside turnout still inside the park, turned off my car and got out to look at the stars away from all the lights of man. There are so many more stars to see when it's really dark and you let your eyes adjust for a few minutes. The Milky Way galaxy was looking particularly creamy. I once read that of all the stars we can see with our naked eyes nearly all of them are within our own galaxy.
