reviews

Oh, but these are awful people, honestly. They’re so deliciously amoral that it’s coolly insane fun to watch them implode, it’s true, but you’d have to run far and fast were you to find yourself actually encountering them lest their slimy stink rub off on you.

Its straightforward simplicity aims it squarely at the kiddies and the kiddies alone, but that’s okay — few films intended for children these days are this gentle, this plainly decent.

With so many pieces of the puzzle seemingly so perfect, how could anything go wrong?

This example of the latest ‘advance’ in animation technology is sterile, synthetic, almost completely unengaging on a human level. It’s animated but inanimate.

*Ooo, ick* was my reaction when I first heard about *Lars and the Real Girl.* Because I had, unfortunately, heard about Real Dolls, the anatomically correct sex toys that are as lifelike as silicone can be. Which means they look like corpses. And the thought of a movie about a lonely guy who buys one of them and pretends it’s his girlfriend? No. No no no no.

Yes, this is the Ang Lee movie notoriously rated NC-17 for, ahem ‘explicit sexuality’ — no children admitted in the name of American squeamishness!

How do you solve a problem like America? Where do you even start? Everything — the war, the demagoguery, the blanket repeal of civil liberties, the whole big mess — seems so entrenched and so intertwined that it’s paralyzing. I’m so hopeless these days that things will ever get better, to the point where I’m not sure I can take yet more rehashing of the fiasco.