Juno

I loved Juno. It left me feeling really happy, and that's all you can really ask from a movie, right? I thought it was loads better than Little Miss Sunshine, which it has oft-been compared to, and I actually thought, as unplanned pregnancy movies go, it was much better than Knocked Up (which I enjoyed). I don't want to say too much since this is still in limited release and a lot of people probably haven't seen it yet, but some stuff I really liked:

-the music, I thought it was perfect. I rarely ever buy movie soundtracks and I want to get the soundtrack.
-it was structured around a school year and there were little subtitles for spring, summer, fall, and winter. This worked really well in my opinion--when you're in high school, so much hinges around the changing of the seasons.
-Michael Cera's character didn't have much to do, and his head-in-the-sand behavior regarding the pregnancy bugged me.
-there was one scene, that I don't want to describe because it was a pivotal plot point (and one I didn't see coming), that was so emotionally awkward and visceral that it made me uncomfortable. In a good way.
-I liked Ellen Page in Hard Candy and I like her even more now.
-Yes, some of the slang was awkward and felt forced--particularly one line "honest to blog?" that made me cringe--but I think that died down as the movie went on.
-Loved Alison Janney as the stepmom. Loved when the dad said "I'm gonna hit that Paulie Bleecker kid in the wiener"
-There was a slag against ultrasound techs! My fiance, currently in school for medical imaging, was very defensive. Hah.
-Jennifer Garner always seemed kinda blah to me in a Sandra Bullock way, but she was very good here.
-Funny that Juno learned that babies have fingernails when they are born, cause I just learned that myself a couple weeks ago and was totally grossed out.
-Much has been made about the media about the treatment of abortion (and lack thereof) in recent movies, including Juno. I liked that it was treated as a valid choice and not some life-ruining trauma.

Miscellany

So my semester is officially over, I have a 14 day vacation coming up and I'm ready to watch a shit-ton of movies. The only thing that could possibly be better is if Netflix finally started to offer Watch it Now for Macs...

A couple things I have been watching, have not been watching, and will be watching:

-The Mist, despite a few minor flaws, fully lived up to my expectations. Still not sure how I feel about the ending. That first time when the bug reared up on its bug hindquarters and showed all those spiny things gave me chills, and I jumped at one point in the whole pharmacy sequence and knocked soda onto my fiance's lap. It was thoroughly awesome. There is a great feature at the Onion AV Club that details the differences between the movie and the story much more thoroughly than I possibly could.

-Last Saturday I wasn't feeling too well and, flipping through the channels, I came across Jon and Kate + 8. Always interested in reality freakshows in the vein of Engaged and Underage, I kept watching, only to find that it was really really boring. Who cares about kids getting haircuts? I was left with the following impressions: I've never seen a man with such a look of utter resignation as Jon. That scene in the credits where it shows her belly full of 6 children--why, God, why? And I really love the little guy with the glasses. Still, I don't see why anyone would want to watch this.

-In the Land of Women is still sitting on top of my TV, along with a boring documentary about Kennedy that I certainly didn't pick. I was planning to watch Heavy Metal Parking Lot tonight, which I have been dying to see for years, but Netflix didn't send it. Stupid sexy Netflix. I also want to try to see Juno over the weekend.

So like I said, I am going to be watching like infinity movies from now til the end of the year, so please do post your suggestions!

Tape

Between finishing grad school, working two jobs, and the fact that I'm getting married in like five minutes, I haven't really been watching anything. However, last night I caught Tape, a movie Richard Linklater made the same year as Waking Life which didn't get nearly as much attention. In fact, I didn't even know this was a Linklater joint until the end credits. This is also notable as the first movie that I had never heard of and rented solely because Netflix recommended it to me and it sounded good.

It was pretty okay. Ethan Hawke and some guy with a wonky eye reunite ten years after graduating high school in a gross motel room in Lansing, MI. Ethan Hawke gets the other guy to admit that he raped his ex (Ethan's ex) at the end of senior year--and gets the confession on tape. He calls the girl (Uma Thurman) and forces them all to talk about it. Awkwardness ensues. This was one of those movies where you can really tell that it was originally a play, cause it's very talky and it all takes place in one room. I thought it was entertaining and it definitely kept me guessing as to what would happen next. Ethan Hawke seemed like a gigantic douche and I have a hard time believing he's not like that in real life.

Oh yeah, I sent back both Dexter and Party of Five--the latter for the reasons detailed in my last post, and Dexter because, despite the uniform raves I heard about it from like everyone in the world, I just couldn't get into it. I enjoyed the parts about Dexter's life but the murder stuff was a little too CSI, which I find boring. And the sister bugged me.

Party of Five

I haven't been watching much of anything lately but after finally finishing The Office, over the weekend I got around to watching the first episode-and-a-half of Party of Five. I was always intrigued by this show when it was on, probably because of my penchant for teen melodrama and, well, who's not curious about the logistics of five orphans raising themselves? I found out that it's really boring. How are we going to find/pay for a nanny, though we have a seemingly endless fount of money from our dead parents? Why is Julia such a dork? How can their parents' restaurant still possibly be open? I found Bailey to be like nails on a chalkboard, and my fiance lost interest as soon as he realized that Jennifer Love Hewitt isn't (I think) in the first season at all. I turned it off halfway through the second episode and still haven't decided if I'm going to give it another shot.

On deck? Dexter, Havoc, and In the Land of Women (which I added to my queue only in a fit of mourning about the end of The OC).

Gone Baby Gone

I really loved this movie--it felt complete in a way that most films don't, and I felt satisfied at the end. The first half moved quickly and really held my interest, and I loved the way that the actors weren't "movie-attractive" (at least apart from the leads). Some of them weren't attractive in any realm, movie or not. They looked like real people from a real city. I'm not a Ben Affleck fan as an actor, but I thought this was a really great job for a first time (I think?) director. The woman who played the crackhead sister was totally believable. It is rare that a movie has a moral message that's not dumbed down and oversimplified (Crash, anyone?). Casey Affleck was also good. I have no doubt that he wouldn't have been cast if not for his relation to the director, but he was decent as a kid who knew the neighborhood and knew who wouldn't talk to the cops. Also, it's rare that a movie about kidnapping doesn't feel exploitative and go for the cheap tearjerks, but Gone Baby Gone doesn't at all. The action sequences were very exciting--and this from a girl who hates action movies--and actually made me jump once or twice. I am stoked to check the book out of the library.

Miscellany

I saw Gone Baby Gone over the weekend, which was very good, which I will write about later, but in the meantime...it included trailers for two movies that I am stoked for:


love that kid from Superbad. and the girl from Hard Candy.


I would not be nearly as excited for this if I hadn't loved The Squid and the Whale so much.

The Office

One thing I've been watching for awhile but not writing about is The Office (American version). My friend got me into it when we used to watch The OC every Thursday, probably about halfway through season 3, so I've been watching the first few seasons ofn Netflix. I wanted to catch up before season 4 started but obviously that didn't happen--we're now about to the point where I started watching. One interesting thing that I didn't catch the first time around is how they made Roy into such a dick while he and Pam were engaged. I think when I started they had just broken up, and Jim was starting to date Karen. I wish they did more with the tertiary characters. Stanley is my ultimate favorite, followed closely by Kelly and Phyllis.
The first few season 4 episodes were not so great (I don't think they can sustain an hour), but last night's was pretty good ("Climb on top of her and think of Stanley!")

Reign Over Me

I was very excited to see Reign Over Me when it was out in theaters, mostly because I am (embarassingly) a sucker for anything with Adam Sandler, and I like Don Cheadle too, and I like the Who song. And Liv Tyler was cute if kind of unbelievable as a psychiatrist. It ended up taking me over two weeks to watch--I fell asleep during the first half, and was meh about finishing the rest of it. It was a pretty decent movie that was suitably funny in the funny parts and dramatic in the dramatic parts, but for me, it raised some interesting questions about whether it is too soon to dramatize 9/11. Is it just me, or is it weird to have a movie about a man who is grieving over his fake family who died in a real tragedy? I might not have even been thinking about that if my fiance hadn't pointed out that no children were on any of the planes. (Not only were Sandler's wife and three daughters killed, but their poodle too). I know there are tons of war movies with stories of fictional soldiers but, I don't know. It seemed emotionally manipulative.

The other problematic thing, for me anyway, is that Adam Sandler's whole career is based on the fact that when he yells loud, apropos of nothing, it's funny. So when he freaks out in the movie, it's almost funny instead of having the intended tragic effect.

I wish...

that they would put Freddy's Nightmares out on DVD. I've never seen it and was totally not cognizant of its existence at the time it was one, but I bet it's awesome. Plus, I read that one episode goes into Freddy's backstory which, despite rumors to the contrary, I am pretty sure they are never going to explore in a prequel. No one wants to see a movie about a child molester/murderer, especially not a wisecracking one. I know there are always debates about whether Freddy was actually a molester or JUST a murderer but 1. what a dumb thing to argue about, even on the Internet and 2. I think it's pretty clear that he was both. Anyway, I know I said a few posts ago that anthologies never work, but I think they work much better on TV than in a movie.

Halloween: Resurrection

Halloween: Resurrection might be the worst movie I've ever seen. What could have been kind of a cool idea-fake Michael Myers hanging around, not knowing the real Michael Myers is there too- was just stupid. I hated stupid Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks. And the movie started with the clumsiest exposition outside of the beginning of a Babysitter's Club book. Jamie Lee is in the mental institute. One nurse asks the other who the patient is. The other nurse says, "Let me tell you about her." Cue flashbacks. UGH!! And it's not good-bad, which is excusable; it's boring, the cardinal sin for horror movies.

Poison Ivy

Back in the day, my mom put on Poison Ivy for my sister and I cause she thought it was a movie about camp. It lasted about 3 minutes, until the dumpy main character, Sylvie, (played by Sara Gilbert, Darlene from Roseanne) said "lips are supposed to be a perfect reflection of another part of a woman's anatomy." Click.

This is such a piece of trash that I'm surprised the Roseanne people didn't have more of a problem with Darlene starring in it right in the middle of their third season (a la whats-her-name from 7th Heaven posing in Maxim). An "erotic thriller" that's neither erotic nor thrilling, Ivy stars Drew Barrymore as the title character as a wrong-side-of-the-tracks girl (scholarship is code for poor) who moves in on Sylvie and her family. She kills her emphysema-ridden mom and sleeps with her gross dad (Tom Skerritt), including a scene featuring his pale, thrusting butt which may be the least sexy thing ever in life. My notes read "ew, you can see his butt."

Drew is pretty good in this, though miles away from her flowers and sunshine persona of today. I think this was her major comeback vehicle post-rehab--the only titles I recognize after it on her IMDB are the Amy Fisher Story (also 1992) and then that bit-part in Wayne's World II. And then her career seems to pick up again in 1994-5 with Bad Girls, Boys on the Side and of course, Scream.

Anyways, though not erotic nor thrilling, it was definitely entertaining, probably because of my unabashed love for badass teen girl movies (like the godawful Thirteen).

Creepshow 2

Creepshow 2: dumb, dumb, not scary. The only segment I was really interested in was The Raft, since it's based on a King story from Skeleton Crew. Though it retained the sense of dread from the book, the kids were so obnoxious that it was hard to feel sympathy when they got eaten by a giant oil slick. Especially the last guy, who touched his girlfriend's boob, then threw her to the monster and swam for his life. In fact, pretty much every character in this movie is completely unlikeable. I feel like these anthology movies never work.

30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night was pretty much the first scary vampire movie I ever saw--and probably the only one that didn't either try to make them sexy, or turn into an action movie. Unfortunately, it suffered from way too much Josh Hartnett, who is totally unbelievable as a hero of anything. Everything that comes out of his mouth sounds dull. While the movie looks cool--the vampires are badass, and there were several awesome sequences (especially when one of them jumps on top of the car, and it's all silvery and black and flickery, and an aerial shot that pans over the whole town as the vampires wreak havoc), the awesome parts didn't add up to an awesome movie. It remained entertaining throughout, but I don't know that it will stick with me--by the end, I didn't know any of the characters names or care. It fails to make the emotional connection of the similar, but far superior, 28 Days Later.

Carrie (2002)

There's only one thing you need to know about the 2002 TV-movie remake of Carrie: IT ENDS WITH CARRIE ALIVE. On her way to Florida, driven by Sue Snell. To start a new life. Had the remake been more successful, it would have been a new life HELPING OTHER PEOPLE WITH TELEKINESIS, documented on a new TV show. I couldn't make this shit up.

Up until that point, it was actually pretty decent. Though the format of showing the events of and leading up to the prom interspersed with police interviews from the days after is actually much closer to the novel, it causes the movie to lose momentum. It also recreates a scene that was in the book, but not in the movie, of a four-year-old Carrie causing rocks to fall from the sky after she sees a teenage neighbor sunbathing topless. Though it adds some backstory, it also adds a lot of bad CGI. The new Sue Snell has an arrogant quality that is totally absent from her portrayal in either the book or the movie. Angela Bettis, also seen as a total misfit in May, was pretty decent as the title character, though she lacked the ethereal quality of Sissy Spacek when she finally gets dressed to go to the prom. Emilie de Ravin is okay as mean-girl Chris Hargensen, although I have no idea why they rewrote the story to make her have second thoughts at the end.

I guess since its a TV movie, this "reimagining of Carrie for a new generation" was interesting enough, but lacked the sheer nastiness and horror of the 70s original. The scenes with the crazy mother (played here by Patricia Clarkson) were way toned-down, though the scene where Chris and her cronies killed the pig is much longer, and much more harrowing. Also, it seems like there is a lot more useless exposition, as if the movie was geared toward teen girls who wouldn't otherwise understand the themes. The prom scene is still fairly shocking, though the moments leading up to the fated drop of the bucket lack the dreamlike feel of the original. Also missing is perhaps the most iconic moment from the original, the hand out of the grave at the end. Though I guess it wouldn't scare anyone now.

But like I said, all you really need to know is that this movie was originally conceived as a pilot for a TV series in which Carrie moves to Florida and helps others with telekinesis. Jesus Christ.

Midnight Movies

For anyone in NJ, the Cinemark in the White Horse Pike in Somerdale is showing a midnight movie once a month. Last weekend we saw The Goonies, and next month, on October 26, they are showing Friday the 13th. The movies are preceded with old-school trailers, and the management takes requests for future showings.

The Last Broadcast

I first heard about The Last Broadcast shortly after The Blair Witch Project came out. The story, about four guys that go looking for the Jersey Devil and go missing, until just one comes back and is charged with the murder of the others, was often called a low(er) budget ripoff of the latter, though it was actually made first. I was excited to see a movie about the Pine Barrens, but, since it was so hard to find (probably because it cause only $1,000 to make), I couldn't find it for rent until now.

It took me three weeks to watch this from start to finish. My enthusiasm was immediately dampened when I opened the envelope and found the cheesiest disc image ever: a cartoony looking blue devil rising up over the trees, superimposed by the title in bloody letters.

In execution, the film is actually not all that similar to the Blair Witch Project. For a good hour, it's more of a courtroom drama, as various players are interviewed about the trial of Jim Suerd, accused of murdering his friends who didn't come back from the woods. It's extremely repetitive and very boring. Also, the fact that a major plot point relies on Suerd's use of Internet Relay Chat immediately dates the movie.

The footage deemed to be "the last broadcast" from the group isn't actually shown until 2/3 of the way through, and is supplemented with commentary from the narrator throughout. It's basically a grainy videotape that periodically slows down, the audio track replaced with what sounds like the voice of Satan (though you can't hear what he's saying). The filmmakers could have done with a big dose of the "Show, don't tell" maxim. Also, it's one of those movies where you can tell they just got a bunch of their friends, cause all the characters are white guys in their 30s and none of them can act. The ending, meant to be shocking, was stupid and nonsensical.

After the huge success of the Blair Witch Project, there was an incredible backlash. Though I haven't seen it since it was in the theater, and didn't think it was all that scary, I do remember that the final scene, with the girl going down the steps and finding her friends all facing the wall, gave me chills. That's more than I can say for anything in The Last Broadcast.

Pet Sematary 2

When I was 11 and an avid Stephen King fan, I was dying to see Pet Sematary 2 in the theater. My parents wouldn't take me, and I clearly remember thinking that I couldn't wait til I grew up and could watch all the horror movies I wanted to. Somehow, I managed to miss out on watching this for the next 15 years. I'm sure I would have liked this movie when it came out, judging from how many times I watched another early 90s Edward Furlong horror vehicle in my preteen years, but on this viewing it came off more as black comedy that anything that could have been possibly conceived as a serious horror movie.

The bare-bones DVD release contains absolutely no special features, save the trailer. The script is atrocious and the acting just as bad, with wooden readings of lines that one would think would be ridden with emotion, like "Gus, what's going on here? Why did you dig up my wife from the grave?"

When Jeff Matthews' actress mom gets electrocuted on set before his very eyes, his veterinarian father moves him across the country to their summer home in Ludlow, Maine, home of the Pet Sematary. The perpetually-smirking preteen Furlong is apparently contracted to only play roles where he is required to wear a cut-off sleeved denim jacket over a flannel shirt. He befriends a chubby kid named Drew, whose sadistic stepfather shoots his dog, leading the boys to bury him in the Pet Sematary. Predictably, the dog comes back in red-eyed, CGI form and rips Gus's throat out.

Inexplicably, instead of being happy that he is rid of his stepfather, blame-free, Drew resurrects Gus so he can come back, climb in bed with Drew's mom (played by whoever played that homewrecker Hallie Lowenthal on My So-Called Life) with a giant hole in his neck, and have creepy zombie-sex with her. So then Jeff decides to bring back his mom, the caretaker of the real cemetary lets Gus dig her up for some reason, and she comes back and tries to kill everyone.

That's really all that happens, save some minor character deaths along the way. The events of the first movie are reduced to a campfire legend in which sole survivor Ellie Creed goes nuts and slaughters her grandparents. The soundtrack is wildly inappropriate and filled with early 90s relics (L7, anyone?) Pretty much everything that happens is completely unbelievable, even for a movie about a haunted Indian burial ground, which actually makes for a pretty entertaining movie. There are also some legitimately disturbing moments, mostly involving animals in peril. At one point, Gus espouses one of my long-held childhood beliefs: that cats are girls and dogs are boys.

It is hard to believe that the filmmakers didn't know how hilarious this movie was, with lines like (after a character has his neck ripped open by Zowie): "I hate that dog."

A remake of the original Pet Sematary with George Clooney as Louis Creed has been rumored for years, even though Clooney is now way too old for the part of a young father. The sequel couldn't match the palpable dread of the original (not to mention the novel's explorations of the madness of grief), and it's doubtful that a modern remake would manage to be as necessarily bleak as the 1989 film.

Black Christmas (1974)

My future husband started school a few weeks ago and has a lot of studying to do, which gives me the perfect opportunity to hog up our shared Netflix queue with all the stuff I want to watch and he doesn't. First up was the original, 1974 Black Christmas, which I've been wanting to see since I caught the remake with my friend and usual-horror-movie-watching partner Rob over Christmas vacation last year. It starred Party of Five's Lacey Chabert and Michelle Trachtenberg, who, in my head, I always call Harriet the Spy, as girls you don't care about getting killed by a guy who not only uses eyeballs for tree ornaments, but eats them (prompting an 8-year-old who totally should not have been in our theater to ask his mom if they were having eyeballs for dinner.)

I suspected that the original, often touted as the first real slasher movie and a godfather to Halloween, would far surpass the eyeball movie. And, mostly, it did. The film, about a group of sorority sisters picked off one-by-one by an unseen killer, established the through-the-eyes-of-the-stalker perspective so common in modern horror. Though Black Christmas is extremely dated, what with all the horrible 70s fashions and hairdos, it's also much more vulgar than the relatively bloodless--literally and figuratively--Halloween. Everyone boozes it up, especially the housemother, who says of her charges "These broads would hump the Leaning Tower of Pisa if they could get up there." One of the girls-Barb, played by Margot Kidder-calls her mother a gold-plated whore, notes that "you can't rape a townie," and gives beer to a kid at a community Christmas party. Jess (Olivia Hussey) is dead-set on an abortion, no matter how much her boyfriend tries to talk her out of it.

Whereas the remake has almost no character development, the original is 95 percent character development. That part of the movie is compelling and fun--but when the killer shows up, it's just not scary. I actually dozed off, which, though most of my friends will tell you is a common occurrence with me during movies, it usually doesn't happen at 3 p.m.

Stephen King's The Mist

I have been waiting for this for years--it's only the best Stephen King short story, with possibly one of the top ten best endings of any short story. And the fact that Frank Darabont is directing bodes well in King-adaptation-land.

24 Hour Horrorthon & Related Events

In honor of Halloween this year, Exhumed Films is showing 24 hours of horror movies at Philly's International House on October 27. The caveat? They aren't announcing the titles ahead of time. Though only $20 bucks, anyone who's ever been to an Exhumed show knows its a crapshoot--sometimes you get horror classics, and sometimes you get random ninja movies.

There's also the Eight Films to Die For thing, which, for some reason, is in the second week of Novehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifmber when everyone's already burnt out on horror movies. I've been the past two years and have yet to see a good movie. In 2006 it was the laughably bad Reincarnation--apparently talking dolls are a lot scarier in Japan than they are here--and last year it was...I can't even remember what, I think something incomprehensible and maybe Russian, and the Web site is no help.

For the past couple years, my friends and I have our own Horror Movie Night, which involves making a bunch of food and watching very mainstream horror movies that everyone can agree on: year 1, A Nightmare on Elm Street and 28 Days Later; year 2, Carrie and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. And someone always pushes for Ghostbusters, which, obviously, not a horror movie. This year is currently undecided, but my vote is for Candyman, which I saw for the first time at Exhumed last year and was the only movie to scare me since (shut up!) The Ring.

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Not from Netflix, but last week I saw the unspeakably awesome The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Video gamers are not typically depicted as leaders in the battle of good versus evil. But in Kong, director Seth Gordon crafts an heroic epic more compelling than six installments of Star Wars and six more Rockys combined. The documentary follows the journey of everyman Steve Weibe, a down-on-his-luck schoolteacher, as he tries to get his world-record-breaking Donkey Kong score verified by Twin Galaxies, the official keeper of such stats.

Twin Galaxies, however, is in bed with Billy Mitchell, holder of the Donkey Kong world record for almost 25 years. Mitchell is first shown as a teenager—mulleted, pimpled, and with a gigantic hickey on his neck—in a 1983 Life magazine spread about arcade game champions. As an adult, Mitchell, a chicken wing sauce mogul, is a weasel with a gang of sycophants who help him ensure that his score is the one that stays in the books and is ultimately printed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

If slimy Billy Mitchell is unabashedly portrayed as the villain in this drama, then Steve Weibe is every bit the hero. After being laid off from his job at Boeing on the same day that he signed his mortgage papers, Weibe takes up playing Kong in his garage while becoming credentialed as a middle school science teacher. Between a montage of interviews from his parents, brother, friends and wife about how Weibe has never been the best of anything, he videotapes his record-breaking score while his toddler son yells “Daddy! Stop playing Donkey Kong! Come wipe my butt!”

Twin Galaxies officials are initially excited by Weibe’s score, until Mitchell complains that it was sent on video and, thus, not admissible. Undaunted, Weibe travels from his home in Redmond, Washington to an arcade in New Hampshire to beat Mitchell’ record live for the judges. He succeeds—until the panel accepts the dodgy, possibly-faked winning tape that Mitchell submits. The rest of the film chronicles Weibe’s quest for justice, amid officials that break into his garage to test his game and familial pressures to quit.

The stranger-than-fiction characters elevate the fairly straightforward story to a raucous, fascinating study of a subculture. The Twin Galaxies judges are uniformly doughy, pale, bad-hair-having men in their 30s who view Mitchell as a legend, and go to unimaginable lengths to make sure that their icon emerges from the controversy unscathed. Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies, writes bizarre folk songs about Mitchell’s gaming accomplishments. Brian Kuh, who broke 16 arcade records in one day in 2006, comes off like a gaming version of The Office’s Dwight Schrute as he calls Mitchell from the competition with play-by-plays of Weibe’s moves. And Doris Self, who delivered Mitchell’s sketchy tape to the judges, was in pursuit of the world record in Q*Bert until she passed away in 2006 at the age of 81.

The heart of the film is the characterization of Mitchell as the scoundrel and Weibe as the heroic everyman, which, though oversimplified, are self-conscious enough to be entertaining. With his slicked-back hair, scary eyebrows, ominous theme music and devious henchman, Mitchell is a dead ringer for Satan; Weibe, on the other hand, comes across as a bumbling but lovable, Forrest Gump-type that you can’t help but root for. Even his wife and mother are candid about the fact that just a regular guy, nothing special about him, with his mother adding that he might even be a little autistic.

Though watching people play video games may sound like a mind-numbing way to spend two hours, Gordon structures the film for maximum suspense, peppering the central conflict with interesting insider info about retro arcade games. Part epic battle, part character study, King of Kong fulfills the mission of any great documentary—making the viewer feel like part of a world with which they would never otherwise come in contact. Unfortunately, the viewers are, at this point, limited, with the film showing in just five theaters nationwide. However, Internet rumor has it that Hollywood is casting a fictionalized version with Johnny Depp as Billy Mitchell for release next year. If that’s the case, I can only hope that such an unnecessary remake drives more people to check out the real thing.