I love the first week of January, the easiness of that first week back from the holidays when nobody wants to do any real work. It feels like you’re still on vacation but now there’s a paycheck coming in. It’s lovely.
Of course it doesn’t last forever and now the world is back and the week is busy and I’m not having the best day ever. Welcome back to real life. For another year. YAY.
Still stuck in the post-holiday lethargy, Gina and I decided to have an easy Friday night of pizza and movies. Mmmm… pizza. Man, how I missed pizza. So much cheesy goodness. Yum. Of course, after gorging myself on said pizza, I think I’m good now for the next little bit.
Interesting side note on the eating experiment. While I didn’t necessarily notice any immediate effects while not eating cheese, I most definitely felt the difference after eating it for the first time in weeks. My stomach was all kinds of grumbly. I didn’t feel bad per se. I just noticed that my body was not exactly happy with me.
Anyway, we ate pizza, snacked on garlic bread, and watched movies.
First up was Take This Waltz.
I am a huge Sarah Polley fan. I, like a lot of girls my age, grew up with her on Avonlea. And as a lady who wants to be a director herself, it’s really exciting to see someone you like and respect make happen the things you want for yourself.
That being said, this was the first of her Director films I’ve seen. I still need to watch Away From Her. And not really knowing anything about Polley’s director/writer style, I didn’t really know what to expect.
Aaaaaaaaand. Well. I didn’t really like it.
How lame is that?
I mean, look, Take This Waltz is a good film. It’s well shot, we’ve got good characters, it’s emotional.
And I really didn’t like it.
I couldn’t follow Michelle Williams and her emotional turmoil or really figure out what her character’s fundamental problem was. I get what was happening, what she was going through on a surface level. But the portrayal of the relationship between her and her husband (Seth Rogan) just didn’t follow what was ostensibly the emotional arc of the story. Instead, she came across as childish, emotionally stunted, and, well, kind of infuriating. I guess that could have been the point but I’m not convinced that it was.
There are some beautiful scenes, some emotionally wrenching moments, and possibly my favorite flirtation to happen over martinis ever. But in the end I was just annoyed. Maybe my expectations were wrong. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but from the beginning of the film I was hoping for something I could relate to as a late-20-something with my own relationship/commitment issues. Maybe I was just trying to see too much of myself in this? I don’t know.
Either way, it didn’t really work for me.
On the other hand, Sleepwalk With Me. Aaaah, I loved Sleepwalk With Me. Which is also a comedy at its heart about relationships. And unlike Take This Waltz, one I could relate to. I love Mike Birbiglia in this one. He’s adorable and goofy, kind of jerk sometimes, also emotionally immature but unlike Michelle Williams’s character in Take This Waltz, he sees what his problem is (eventually) and over the course of the story he grows up. He makes his mistakes, people are hurt (including himself), but these things happen in life. And the ending, while maybe not the happily ever after we’re hoping for, is satisfying and is in its way another kind of happily ever after.
Lauren Ambrose is also gorgeous in this one. When did that happen? I mean, I’ve always liked her and she’s always been pretty. But she looks great here. Good for her!
The whole sleepwalking thing is great, btw. The dream sequences are perfectly integrated into the story and they are hilarious.
I liked this one.
I’ll go ahead and recommend them both, other people might like Take This Waltz more than I did. It is really beautifully done if a little pretentious. It is very INDIE FILM. But that’s okay sometimes.
Both of these are currently available on Netflix streaming.
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