1408

I saw this last week, by myself (thank you, honey) and was pleasantly suprised. Its not a horror movie, really. Its like a really long episode of the Twilight Zone-sort of like when the gambler dies and 'wakes up' playing cards, winning every hand, drinks all around, and women everywhere....and he is bewildered. " Why am I here? After all I was a bad person.....?" " What makes you think you are 'here'?" is the reply.

This movie is more, I think, about wanting something and then getting it. Mike Enslin is jaded, fractured, lost-estranged from his wife after the death of their pre-teen daughter to some wasting disease, he now writes a series of '10 Most Haunted.....' books. He never really believes in what he writes about, and cannot deal with the fact that he was once heralded as a literary sensation and a serious novelist for his first book (a sort of Livingston's Seagull). He receives a post card to come stay at the Dolphin Inn in New York, in the room 1408. The numerical puns alone make this movie fun to watch (how many times can you find '13'?) but you don't have to exert a massive amount of mental gymnastics to appreciate that this is not really a horror movie. It's more along the lines of a metaphor for a man that is dealing with his inner demons and as the movie progresses and he accepts weirder and weirder things that occur in the room the ante is upped with each successive occurance. First the Karen Carpenter song-another tortured intellectual that died at her own hand, sadly enough setting the tone. Then the gradual discomfort of the room-cold, heat, sounds. The metaphore of being closed off. The visions of others' pain and demise, and the recurring spectre of the sinking man ( the most violent of the images, portraying, I think, Mike's feelings of hopelessness and meaningless anger at the death of his daughter) on the ship. No one should have to watch their child die.

And the ending-if you are a parent its a bit of a tear jerker, and the tape player helping to illustrate that some things just aren't explainable.

I liked.

Ratatouille

We went and saw this movie the other day and I was quite surprised! I knew that I would probably like it going into it, but I wondered about the three little one-if they would appreciate it, or if the humor (knocking haute cuisine) would go over their head.

I'm pleasantly happy to saw that for a two hour movie about a talking, cooking rat, they handled it quite well. The character development was very well done, and the human animation plus the voice acting of Peter Oswalt (Remey), Janeane Garofalo (Colette), Ian Holm(Skinner), Peter O'Toole (Anton), Brad Garrett (Gusteau) and others made it an enjoyable outing. The Pixar short had people rolling in the aisles and a large knowledge of cooking is not required. The story of a rat (Remey) aspiring to be something he is not, nor should aspire to be according to convention is timeless and done with enough humor and believability to make it not a retread of something you've seen before. The monologue at the end is a delicious performance by Peter O'Toole.

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."