This is what happened when my friend and I watched 'Brokeback Mountain' the first time.....

You're nobody 'til somebody shoots you....

I’ve always believed that Matthew McConaughey is a total loser. I think his accent is ridiculous, I think his sleaziness is too severe for the silver screen, I think his abs are a smart ploy to keep the women of the world from realising he’s just plain gross and I used to think that he had absolutely no acting skills to speak of. I was very deeply invested in the idea that he was just one of those actors who is ‘attractive’ and ‘charming’ enough to keep getting roles despite their lack of talent. Like Keanu Reeves or Shea LaBeouf. And the reason I put those words in quotation marks is because I personally do not find him attractive or charming, but will concede that other people in this world do. I accept it. It’s the same way I feel about crocs, polar fleece and rat’s tails, I hate all of them but understand some people feel differently. And hey, it’s just like they say ‘it takes all kinds to make a world’. But it may seem that on the matter of Matthew McConaughey’s acting abilities, I have been too clouded by my disgust for him to realise he’s actually kind of a winner. I’m not completely committing to him but I will say this, in The Lincoln Lawyer, he is totally compelling. Maybe its because his character is supposed to be a bit dodgy and manipulative but whatever the reason I could not stop watching this film. Even after my loins shriveled up at the sight of him, and then completely combusted in on themselves upon subjection to that filthy southern drawl, EVEN AFTER THAT I just couldn’t turn the film off.

I’m a fan of the thriller genre, I like not knowing what’s going to happen and spending the whole film trying to solve the mystery myself. I generally fail at this game, I get too overzealous and start accusing every single person who enters the story of being the killer or ‘perp’ in industry terms, and that gets old real fast, lemme tell ya. But still it’s fun to be wrong because it means there’s a lot of “No WAAAAAYY!” and “Oh my god, what just HAPPENED?” going on between me and the tv. I like a genre that’s interactive; I lead a very solitary life so it’s the closest I get to a dinner date these days. But don’t feel sorry for me, I drink and talk to myself, so it’s not an altogether lonely existence. I’ve had some really choice debates with myself over the years, real mind-blowing stuff. Okay, mostly it’s about whether or not I should take my pants off, but both sides put forth some good arguments. But let’s get back to The Lincoln Lawyer. The film is an adaptation of the book which was written by Michael Connelly back in 2005. It’s usually a pretty safe bet that if the film was first a book, then the story at least will be interesting. They’d have to sell a certain amount of copies to warrant it being converted for the silver screen, and as long as the screenwriter and director don’t completely balls it up, the film should be good. Clear exceptions to that rule include One for the Money, One Day and…. (I’m going to be unpopular here, I know) …. all of The Lord of the Rings movies. Come at me with your torches and broken beer bottles people, I stand by my claim.

 Luckily, The Lincoln Lawyer is an intriguing film and the casting, I believe, was spot on. Mathew McConaughey was indeed the perfect guy for the corrupt and highly street-smart lawyer Mickey Haller. Ryan Phillippe was an interesting choice for the part of Louis Roulet, but it worked really well! Actually, if I really think about it; maybe Phillippe was an obvious choice for this role. He does innocent well, he’s totally sinister when he wants to be and he’s definitely the type of guy you’d assume would manipulate people with his charisma, flawless good looks and intellect. In a nutshell that’s who this Louis Roulet character is, albeit a lot more psychotic. Okay, Phillippe was always going to be a slam dunk, good casting there guys! Marisa Tomei is a pretty likeable character. She’s just adorable, isn’t she?! The kinda gal you’d love to brunch with. So she’s great in the role of Haller’s ex-wife Maggie McPherson, as per usual. However, she’s not stand out. She does the job well and you like her just as you are intended to, but you kind of forget about her a few days after watching the film. William H. Macy (aka the guy I wish was my cool uncle or mentor-turned-friend in real life) was just peaches in this as Haller’s trusty investigator Frank Levin. I love him! Always have, always will, and he is such an integral part of the film’s success. He adds a bit of humour to an otherwise fairly serious subject. I love his slightly-intoxicated passive aggressive remarks as Haller leaves the bar one night, it’s just delightful to watch. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say he is one of the few men who can unequivocally pull off shoulder length hair. This is a rare gift; most men just look sleazy with long hair. My man Macy rocks that look hard. I think the facial hair and lax attitude helps though.

I’m not watching as many films these days as I’d like to, I just got over a long stint of reviewing for the fringe in my home city and am, honestly, a little burned out. But The Lincoln Lawyer (named so because he often conducts business from his Lincoln town car, just FYI) was on telly the other night while I was curled up on the couch. The remote was on the kitchen counter and though I wanted to immediately switch over once I saw McConaughey, my laziness kept me from moving for a few minutes. Luckily I didn’t because in that time I was totally hooked. Not the first time my lack of vigor has produced positive results, either. One time I couldn’t be bothered telling a guy who was interested in me (shocking, I know) that I wasn’t on board and instead just allowed things to progress at a slow pace. That guy I ended up dating for roughly four months. Do you even know how much free food I got in that time? A LOT. And he was alright for the most part, kind learned to like him. Not dissimilar to how I began to like cask wine, you eventually realise you’re not too good to go there. 

A very intriguing story with a lot of great performances, I would recommend The Lincoln Lawyer to anyone, even those who (like me) think McConaughey is a douche. He is, but he can also act. I guess wonders never cease.  

ABBY.... THERE'S A JACKAL IN THE ROOM!!!

You know how when you decide to do a big clean of the house and you’ve made a concise list of all the jobs you need to get done, after a day or so you realise that you’re not even half way through the list? And then you ask yourself how this could happen because really there were only like… four major jobs to do; tidy, clean, vacuum and mop. So you look back and realise that as you tidied you found yourself getting distracted with other little jobs that you thought “oh I’ll just quickly do that” like organising your DVD collection. And at first you thought alphabetically is the best way and so you did that. Then once you’re done you decide that system actually sucks so you decide to organise them by genre. But then that doesn’t work either because you only really have comedy, rom com and tv shows, so you then organised them into groups ranging from favourite movies and tv shows down to the ones you bought for $5 and only ever watched that one time. But then you think that maybe that’s just going to get confusing and maybe it will keep you from ever revisiting those forgotten movies that perhaps deserve a second chance. So you go back to the alphabetical system. You know what that’s like, right? No? Okay, well I do. And this long winded introduction is my way of explaining why I haven’t written on this blog for so long. Every time I went to do it I got side-tracked looking up things like the correct spelling of an actor’s name or where the movie was filmed and then inevitably got hooked on watching girls playing amazing bass guitar riffs and clips from SNL and also that amazing internet comedy ‘Ted and Gracie’ and then I’d forget what I was doing on the internet in the first place. Not for nothin kids but I have a crazy short attention span. Probably why I always walk out of the supermarket with packs of colourful textas, double sided sticky tape and aromatic hand moisturizer instead of what you’re actually supposed to get at the shops. Milk, coffee, groceries etc. All logic is forgotten when I see anything colourful. And then after a while of forgetting to post, I ended up forgetting my password. And to make matters worse I’d changed my mobile number during my long hiatus and so when the helpful people at gmail tried sending me a text with my new code, it wouldn’t work. So I was completely banned from visiting my own goddam blog! It’s my freakin blog gmail! Get your head in the game! But I eventually worked it out and I’m back online! YAY! Let me just quickly see if that chick has any new bass rifs to watch….. no. We’re cool.

Okay, so after that insanely long and tedious rant I will move on to the movie I’m reviewing today. And by today I obviously mean a year ago. I wrote it a year ago, but I’m posting it today. We all up to speed? Good! It’s called Sleepwalk With Me and it is the creation of comedian, writer, actor and director Mike Birbiglia. If you haven’t seen the movie or any of his stand up comedy, you may actually remember him from his hilarious cameo in the first season of ‘Girls’ as the guy with mood swing issues who interviews Hannah for a job she inevitably doesn’t get. This guy is great, and his comedy is very diverse. None of those usual blokey jokes that we’ve come to expect from American comedians like “Oh women are elusive! I like porn! Why are dogs wearing clothes? Cheese is delicious!” yeh guys, we get it; you’re dudes. But Mike Birbiglia is not that sort of comic. And this movie is just wonderful.

Simply put; the film follows Matt Pandamiglio (played by Mike Birbiglia) as he struggles with relationships, stress induced sleepwalking and breaking into the comedy scene. But it’s so much more than just the story of an aspiring comedian whose life is a bit of a mess.  Matt isn’t a great comedian at the start. His material isn’t very good and it’s mostly because he doesn’t really have a lot to talk about. It’s only when he starts joking about his girlfriend and their relationship that he gets any real attention. The change in his comedy style leads to interest from an agent who deals mostly in small venue gigs that don’t pay much and are quite a ways away. Matt accepts the offer to do a sort of comedy road trip and sets off on a bizarre journey from comedy club to comedy club. The stress of this plus the anxiety he feels about the direction his life is taking and his inability to communicate his concerns starts to affect him in very odd ways. Matt’s sleepwalking becomes more and more adventurous leading him to do anything from taking a shower fully clothed at a friend’s house all the way up to jumping out a window. It’s hilarious and scary at the same time, because you don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. Matt is a likeable, albeit kind of spineless, guy and the people in his life are all very relatable and affable. I love Abby, his girlfriend. And I love that she’s played by Lauren Ambrose. Does anyone else remember that gorgeous red hair from the classic 90s comedy ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’? Cos I sure do. She was such a surly bitch in that flick, but that hair… my GOD that hair! Delicious! And I feel she’s perfect in the role of Matt’s free-spirited and ever supportive partner Abby. It’s just too bad he’s too much of a dick to realise how amazing she is. I mean he kind of does, I’m probably being unfair to him, but he clearly feels he’s not into the relationship anymore and can’t seem to deal with or know what to do about it.

There seems to be a very strict format when it comes to big budget films and to be honest I get kind of sick of the monotony of it all. I hate when you watch a film and after about 10 minutes you know how it’s going to end. I mean, where’s the mystery? Where’s the drama? Where’s the suspense? These are the things I rarely get in my films and often get in my relationships. Ideally it’d be the other way around but ya can’t win em all, right?! I don’t want to just go through the motions with a film, I want to have no idea what’s going to happen. And in Sleepwalk With Me, I was exquisitely unsure of how any of it would turn out. I also appreciated how Matt sort of retells the story of when all this sleepwalking business happened but keeps from going into too much detail of what his up to now. The whole talking-to-the-camera  style isn’t always affective, but I believe it works here. Mostly because this whole thing was based on real life events which Mike later turned into an off-Broadway show and then eventually made into a movie, this movie. When a main actor talks directly to the audience it can sometimes jolt the movement of the story which kind of takes you out of the experience which isn’t good.  But I think this style propels the story and helps the natural flow of the movie. Oohh Sorry guys that sounded wanky… What I mean is it was cool and I liked it and it reminded me that this is a comedian doing a comedy movie about his life. Much better! 

It is a really cool and refreshing film and if I haven’t sufficiently convinced you to go see it (or now, almost a year after its release, rent it) then here’s the clincher: this film contains the funniest diagnosis of what sleepwalkers are doing wrong that I have ever heard. I won’t ruin it for you but when one of Matt’s friends finds him showering in the middle of the night and Matt explains that he was having a dream, this guy says sums up sleepwalking in one perfectly flippant comment. Even now, a year later, I sometimes think of that line and laugh hysterically. The characters are people you would want to be friends with and the relationships in this movie, with all their ups and downs, are actually really relatable. I know that sometimes it’s good to go see a film where the people in it are faced with such horrific adversity that it makes you thankful for what you have, and opens your eyes to the problems in the world. But sometimes it’s also nice to go see a film about all the little idiosyncrasies we face when attempting to navigate our own lives. I personally have a rough time trying to connect with people sometimes. And I know that I am often guilty of letting relationships develop in a way that I’m not happy with, just because I can’t find the words to speak up. So I do relate to Matt’s plight. The film is funny as hell but it also doesn’t diminish the issues these people face. And just to end on a predictable note, I felt very bashful when Matt’s dad lectures him about his wayward life. I am no stranger to that lecture and so I almost started apologizing for my failures right there in the movie theater. Luckily I worked out it wasn’t real life before I admitted my insanity to everyone at the screening. Gotta be happy for small victories, right?!