Friday, February 24, 2012

(Wander)Lust For Blood

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Wanderlust is a lot of fun so I wouldn't hold it against y'all if you went to see that this weekend - give David Wain money and make Wetter Hotter Americaner Summer happen! - but the best movie that I've already seen that's coming out today is The Forgiveness of Blood, the new movie from Maria Full of Grace director Joshua Marston. Granted I've only seen two of the movies coming out this weekend, and they are Wanderlust and The Forgiveness of Blood, but nevermind all that. Blood is the best! It's also presumably coming out on several thousand fewer screens than Wanderlust, but you should keep an eye out for it.


The film tells the story of how an Albanian family in a rural town get trapped inside their house by a blood feud with a neighboring family after a deadly spat occurs between them. It plunks us down in a place with rules very different from our own and then goes about showing how similar we still are under that - Martson, an American who lives in New York, seems to have made this his mission, showing the ill fit between these other cultures with their lingering pasts and the modern world creeping in at the edges. The kids in Blood are literally trapped by the arbitrary and archaic rules of their elders, with the foremost patriarchal figure in their lives having let them horribly down and abandoned them. The film's most riveting, as was Maria, in showing the powerless of women in these structures - best in show goes to Sindi Lacej as the teenage daughter Rudina, full of promise only to have it all snuffed out in a flare of macho.


Besides the movies I have seen, there are a few others - like for instance Tyler Perry's new movie Good Deeds, starring himself and my nemesis Thandie "Ugh" Newton, which might just be the answer to what the equal and opposite force to all the goodness inside of me would be. Also there's propaganda piece Act of Valor, and Gone with Amanda Seyfried and Wes Bentley. Read what I gots to say on them over at Celebrity Beehive.
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4 comments:

Rob K. said...

JA, I am totally down with your TOm Cruise hate and your Robert Downey Junior loathing (ugh and double ugh), but what's with the Thandie Newton thing? True, she was a star in the horribly preachy and stupid movie Crash, but other than that I don't see anything objectionable about her. Care to share?

Jason Adams said...

It's some kind of a chemical thing. I just cannot stand looking at her. I haven't been able to since the first time I saw her in Beloved way back when. (Hey that's an idea for a posting series - The Moment I Fell Against.) It's not really something I can explain in words. She might be perfectly fine in person... OKAY I DON'T BELIEVE THAT. SHE IS EVIL. EVIL! UGH I HATE HER SO MUCH! Ahem. See? I don't know. I am just a crazy person, basically. Pay me no mind.

Rob K. said...

I hear you. There are just certain people that one has a seemingly physical repulsion for and that's all there is to it (mine would be Darren Criss from Glee). Or maybe you and she had a like, Major Conflict in a past life.

John said...

Crash preachy and stupid, I couldn't disagree more Rob...