Two Movies

Just wanted to mention two more movies we watched recently through Netflix.

"Dan In Real Life" - This really wasn't what I was expecting. I thought it was going to be more about Steve Carrell's character's home life and getting back into the dating scene, but it ended up being one of those family-get-together-for-the-holidays movies where the perfect family reunites at some unrealistically scenic, vintage house and plays football, has crossword competitions, does aerobics, and even puts on a family talent show complete with a stage. What family does this? It was like watching a 90min J Crew ad. Steve Carrell's comic timing was toned down, and Dane Cooke was typically annoying. Who really likes Dane Cooke anyway? Why he's famous is beyond comprehension. This movie was too much in the vein of "Home For The Holidays", "The Family Stone", "Bed Of Roses", and even a little bit of "Wedding Crashers" and "Meet The Parents" though nowhere near as funny.

"In The Realms Of The Unreal" - This was a bizarre documentary about Henry Darger, a Chicago janitor, who, for most of his 81 year life, prolifically wrote and painted and painstakingly created a fantasy world about 7 heroic sisters, all in the privacy of a room he rented from a couple. His hundreds of paintings are very elaborate in detail, with some being as large as 12 feet in length, and feature scenes from his writings. I personally thought they had a very early-Disney quality about them not unlike "Fantasia", "Bambi", or "Snow White". The novel he wrote (same title as the movie) is over 15,000 pages, the single longest non-fiction work ever written. Director Jessica Yu brilliantly pieces together animated sequences along with interviews of the few people that new this very, very quiet reclusive self-taught man. It was a very intriguing look into somebody's very private world, and some may interpret Darger as having some manner of psychosexual disorder or severe issues left over from his childhood. Yu does not steer you to any particular conclusions, leaving the viewer to take it all in at face value. Highly recommended if you liked "The Devil and Daniel Johnston".