The Wrestler?

I just watched The Wrestler.  Eh.  I was a bit under whelmed.  Depressing (and not in a good way), decent performances but I wasn’t blown away.  There was a lot of hype, an Oscar nomination for Rourke, but I was disappointed.   It happens a lot these days.  I put a big Hollywood hit on my Netflix queue thinking “Well, all the critics liked it so it must be good” only to be left unmoved.  My mother used to steal my Netflix DVDs when they came in the mail.  It was really irritating because once something goes in her room there’s a good chance it will never come out again, not this decade.  I was trying to figure out how to make sure to get the mail before she got to it but then after a few weeks she just stopped.  Turned out it was my preference for obscure indie and foreign films, quirky little movies or British television crime dramas she had never heard of that got her to quit hijacking my movies. 

Here’s a sampling of recently viewed choices:

I’ve Loved You So Long

The Intended

The Reader

The Wire- Season Five

Frozen River

Tell No One

Dark City

Rachel Getting Married

Journey to Kafiristan

In The City

Dexter-Season Two

The Mayor Of Casterbridge

Meantime

Nothing

 

Not all great but all kind of interesting.  Has anybody seen any of those?  Well, some of them are somewhat mainstream.  I like stuff that’s character driven and less homogenized and pasteurized than the usual big studio project.  I go by actors or directors I like, or an interesting description.  If I had to only see what’s in the McMall Movieplexes I’d never see anything.  I have absolutely no interest in the new Star Trek movie or Wolverine.  I haven’t seen Spiderman (how many are there now?) or anything Fast or Furious.  I don’t care about Jennifer Aniston or Matthew McConaughey’s new romantic comedy.  ZZZZZZZ.  Damn, I still haven’t seen Jaws just on principle!  To me all this stuff is the high fructose of culture, empty calories and the same old formulas.  Ugh.  

Do I feel superior for my rarefied movie tastes?  You bet!  Luckily my lack of self-esteem in most other areas of my life keeps me level headed and down to earth.  I’m very accessible!  And if nothing else I don’t have to go searching for my DVD’s in Mom’s bottomless pit of crap!