'It was going to be a place where only the things you wanted to happen would happen.'

[thepresidentrix]

All the movies I've seen since the last time I wrote about movies I'd seen. Unless you count last night, when I wrote about these same movies, and lj erased it. Bleh.

(Cuts for moderate spoilers. Where possible, I try to spoil with a light hand, but I find it impossible to be entirely vague).

Comments

[isilweth]

makes me think that if 'Wild Things' has the staying power to become anything like a classic, it will be enjoyed by many, but cherished by a certain kind of kid and the adults who once used to be that certain kind of kid - the kind of kid... who wants to behave but who lashes out time and again, because his stubborn little body so often proves insufficient to contain all his anger at once. In short, a kid with no impulse control.

That's my daughter and she loved "Wild Things". It's the first film to make her cry because she identified so strongly with Max; but also with KW because she's a big sister. She couldn't stop talking about it after she saw it on Sunday.

[thepresidentrix]

What a great story. I'm glad she connected with it so deeply.

The first movie I remember making me cry in the theater was Independence Day.

[tempestsarekind]

Well, now I want to see these movies! (I'd wanted to see the first three, but had no desire to see Astro Boy until now.) I love what you've written here; these are lovely, funny reviews.

Or is it just that the movie thinks the audience will be weirded out by watching female athletes sweat and compete without a man publicly reassuring us he still wants to sleep with them?

Sadly, I bet this is it. *weary sigh*

re: kids and trauma--Neil Gaiman always points out that it's mostly adults who are traumatized by Coraline, because the kids see it as an adventure story with a protagonist around their age, rather than "oh no oh no, child in danger!" I wonder if the same might true for Where the Wild Things Are and Astro Boy. There's something about that fantasy of being parentless that seems to keep cropping up in children's media--Roald Dahl comes to mind. Though not having parents is not necessarily the same thing as being rejected by one's parents. Maybe the kids just won't notice. :)

[thepresidentrix]

That's a really good point. (I am traumatized by Coraline, but I read it as an adult). It could also be the case that I am more than usually sensitive to these things, even now, because I have my own Daddy Issues like woah, but, I mean... The poor little robot boy asks his dad 'Why don't you love me anymore?' and his dad looks right at him and says (unkindly if without malice), 'You're not my son, and I don't want you anymore.'

*sob* As my dad used to sing to himself sometimes, 'Poor little A.I. boy...' (Yeah. He wrote that song all by himself).

[tempestsarekind]

...Wow. That's a pretty extreme sentiment for a children's movie! I'm surprised that made it into the final film--were there no panels or test audiences who objected?

I was fairly traumatized by Coraline as well, though not so much that I didn't turn around and read it again two weeks later. :)

[thepresidentrix]

I suppose it helps somewhat that the father is clearly emotionally overwrought and sort of sleepwalking his way through the scene in grief; an adult at least can probably tell that the sentiment comes more from self-loathing than poor little robot boy loathing. But can a kid tell the difference? I dunno