This is it, my friends: the elephant’s graveyard. I wish I had seen Eastern Promises.

(If I was smart, I would make montages of each month’s movies, kind of like a Star Wars poster. You know I’m not smart.)

Superbad
Friday, October 12, 9:20, Greater Union Hurstville, Cinema 8

Infinitely better for me the second time around, because I didn’t have to deal with idiots, Superbad holds up as a movie that is not about cheap laughs born of shock; it is a legitimately heartfelt movie about the love between two sets of two dudes and a sort of happy medium in McLovin. I don’t need to say anything more at the moment because there’s nothing that can make Superbad better than it already is.

Michael Clayton
Friday, October 26, 6:45, Greater Union George Street, Cinema 5

I return to George Street after five weeks away, only to find that they’ve renumbered all of their screens and that Michael Clayton is what I’ve got ahead of me. I don’t understand what precisely is to love about Michael Clayton: it begins with Clayton driving away from a house of gambling, to a situation that needs fixing, and finally into a field, where he meets a horse – thus proving that he is a replicant. Then the movie starts proper, well before all of this.
It’s around this point that we learn that Steven Soderbergh has a hand in all of this, and we draw collective sighs of frustration, at the man who promotes technique and/or pointless (sometimes even backwards) innovation above all else. Michael Clayton struck me as strange right from the very first shot of the room of the hero’s son: it is decorated by models of Evangelion Unit 02 and the Gundam Death Scythe. Both of these are from 1995, and are not very likely to be in the domain of a kid who’s so big into a new craze sweeping kids that is supposed to be like a beacon for those adults have become thoroughly mentally unstable.
Other than that, it seems like a very strange movie: it’s exactly like Erin Brockovich without boobs, and with murderous intrigue. I may have to give it another chance, but I really didn’t feel it when I saw it way back when, and was pretty much disgusted with the ending, which hinged on the oldest trick in the book. It’s acceptable when I see it in a Bruce Willis movie, but here? No. This is nominated for best picture for some reason, which either means that I missed something and this movie was actually super worthwhile, or that the Academy is a pack of liars.

Pick of the Month: Superbad

Who didn’t see that coming? I’m not going to try justifying this choice.