The Chumscrubber

While I knew nothing about this movie prior to watching it, a reoccurring theme - due to living in a small community, I was intrigued by the odd title and the even more bizarre looking jacket image. Holding little expectations, I was blown away. The Chumscrubber can be compared to such obscure but must watch movies as Donnie Darko and The United States of Leland.

The impressive cast, particularly the performance of Ralph Fiennes, lulls the audience into a false sense of security toward the character's lives. Living in the idyllic, nuclear family endorsing, gated community leads the audience to believe The Chumscrubber is a Martha Stewart aspiring fluffy movie; however, this superficial bliss is completely shattered when the main character Dean Stiffle, portrayed by Jamie Bell, quickly discovers his (arguably) best friend has hung himself.

This movie is delightfully dark and satirizes the huge lie of the suburban utopia. It is also a refreshingly honest glimpse of teen life in North America. It delves into the confusion, peer pressure, and difficult time being a teenager really is. This is particularly relevant if you too are tired of the sophomoric, glamorized, superficial, film renditions of teenage high school life.

Go watch it. You'll enjoy it. I'm off to read the book. 8.5 / 10 - jinx out.

The Matador

Maybe it was my overall lack of expectations or my deficient mental functioning, as a direct result of my residual hangover from New Years Night, but I believe The Matador was a fantastic movie. Originally, I held little knowledge of the movie and decided consulted the movie gods to determine if it was worth watching. As you can see from the movie jacket image below, this search did not reveal much.

The only information I was to learn was the movie stared Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, and Hope Davis. Pierce Brosnan's action / adventure / slut roles usually leave me irritated at 'dick flicks,' Greg Kinnear has held some more interesting roles but I'm not rushing out to every movie he participates in either and, finally, Hope Davis has done interesting movies (American Splendor being my favourite) but also some boring-as-shit movies too. Needless to say, I was curious how these very distinct thespians would work as a group.

I was surprised and impressed with the ensemble's ability to create a witty, quirky, off-beat comedy. The best part of this flick was, by far, Pierce Brosnan's role as Julian Noble. His extreme personality swings from slick hit man / end-of-life-facilitator, to dorky loser, to infantile asshole, to promiscuous lover, to a desperate and friendless middle aged man left me laughing through out the entire movie. As you can see from the picture below, he definitely did not play his stereotypical role.



I highly recommend this movie as it is entertaining through out and completely worth witnessing the death of Pierce Brosnan's slick wooer of women persona.

7 / 10 - jinx out.